Full-time culture warrior and sometime Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sports a Harvard Law degree and plenty of supposed respect for the U.S. Constitution, but he governs without wisdom or fealty to the most important American principles. Federal Judge Mark Walker has just made that resoundingly clear in issuing a stay on a very bad law DeSantis champions.
At issue is the Individual Freedom Act, an Orwellian name for a statute that DeSantis likes to call the Stop WOKE Act. Taking aim at diversity and sensitivity trainings and other stuff that’s been tossed in the bottomless bucket the right wing likes to call “critical race theory,” the law bars business or teaching practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist or should feel guilty for past actions committed by their forefathers. It also prohibits people engaged in such work from claiming that discrimination is acceptable to achieve diversity or saying that a person’s status as being oppressed or privileged is determined by their background.
Whether one appreciates or reviles such trainings and sessions, to the extent that Florida is now infringing on private people’s and businesses’ ability to express themselves, the law ought to offend anyone who has read the First Amendment, which says Congress (and by extension state legislatures) can make no law “abridging the freedom of speech.” And given that the law also bars educators from discussing such matters, it clearly acts as a muzzle on college campuses, which in other contexts folks on the right correctly insist should be places that protect and defend the open exchange of ideas, including uncomfortable ideas.
Most of the attention on Walker’s ruling enjoining the law’s implementation against private speakers has focused on his pop culture reference to the TV show “Stranger Things.” That was artful, but what we really appreciate is the judge’s resounding pronouncement that it is hogwash — and illegal — for government to use its power to constrain freedom in the name of freedom. We know DeSantis won’t be shamed by his hypocrisy; will any of his political allies?
