This case was about higher education, but the implications for K-12 are clear. Julian Vasquez Heilig explains what happened in Florida.
This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit struck down the higher education provisions of Florida’s “Stop WOKE” Act. Diane Ravitch rightly called it a “stunning victory” for the Constitution and First Amendment. This ruling is more than a win for professors who teach about race, gender, history, civil rights, public policy, or inequality. It is a warning to every governor, trustee, donor, legislator, president, provost, and dean who thinks academic freedom can be traded for political safety.
The slogan was “Stop WOKE.” The legal question was much bigger. Can a state pay a professor and then claim ownership over the professor’s classroom speech? Florida said yes. The Eleventh Circuit said no.
George Orwell wrote in 1984, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” That line matters because authoritarianism does not only punish dissent. It tries to control reality. It demands obedience and then calls that obedience truth. That is why this case matters.
Florida argued that because professors at public universities are paid by the state, their classroom speech belongs to the state. The Eleventh Circuit called that theory a “salary-for-speech rule.” The court described it as a “breathtaking assertion of power” over classrooms where students should be freely trusted to puzzle through ideas that are “good and bad, easy and hard.” It also concluded that if the First Amendment protects anything in public university classrooms, Florida’s law crossed the line.
That language matters because it names the danger clearly. University faculty are not hired to be the mouthpieces of governors. They are not hired to recite legislative talking points. They are hired to teach, research, test claims, mentor students, and pursue truth through evidence.
That does not mean faculty can do whatever they want in a classroom. Universities can shape curriculum and set professional standards. Deans can lead colleges. Provosts can protect academic quality while presidents set institutional priorities.
But that is different from a legislature imposing a statewide political speech code on every professor in every public university classroom. It is also different from a dean using political fear as an administrative tool. I am aware of a college of education dean in Florida who told a faculty member in a meeting that her syllabus had too much “DEI stuff.” The question is whether it had too much DEI for the discipline, for the students, for the evidence, or for the politics of the moment.
Read the full post here.