This past summer Florida adopted House Bill 7, better known as the Stop WOKE Act. The legislation blocks academic instruction and workplace training that "espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels" belief in a variety of race-related ideas. It is one of a number of so-called anti-"Critical Race Theory" bills that have been advanced by Republican policymakers in the states since 2020. Some have taken aim at workplace training. Others have focused on primary and secondary education. An emerging set of proposals are targeted at higher education. The Florida bill has elements of all three. The University of Florida produced providing guidance to its employees on how to comply with the bill, with a list of ideas that "instructors may not suggest or assert."
Several lawsuits have already been filed against the enforcement of Stop WOKE Act, and Judge Mark Walker has already issued a temporary injunction on the workplace training portions of the law. (Judge Walker had previously issued a sharp opinion in a case regarding the right of state university professors to serve as expert witnesses in lawsuits filed against the state. The state is currently appealing that case to the 11th Circuit.) The ACLU filed a separate lawsuit on the education components of the act, as has FIRE.
In response to anti-Communist measures aimed at state universities, the Warren Court emphasized that academic freedom was an important First Amendment value, but the scope and implications of that point are less than clear. In Garcetti v. Ceballos in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court held that that when the speech of government employees is pursuant to their duties it is not protected by the First Amendment. Crucially, however, the Court held open the question of whether this was still true in the context of teaching and scholarship by university professors at state universities.
