Appeals court rules Ron DeSantis’ ‘Stop WOKE Act’ unconstitutional
A federal appeals court has ruled, once again, that Governor Ron DeSantis’ Orwellian-sounding “Individual Freedom Act” — aka the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act” — is unconstitutional and a clear violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
Following a First Amendment lawsuit filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a federal appeals court ruled that Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act” — an Orwellian ban on what faculty at public universities may discuss in the classroom — violated the right to free speech and free expression of Florida University faculty and students. The ruling affirmed a previous court decision that had blocked the legislation from taking effect (via FIRE.org):
“Though the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them,” wrote Judge Britt C. Grant of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in the decision. “Forcing an official government line—in a college classroom of all places—is exactly the ‘pall of orthodoxy’ that the First Amendment will not tolerate.”
In September 2022, the FIRE filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s “Individual Freedom” law (dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act” by its proponents). FIRE’s lawsuit — on behalf of a professor, student, and a student group — argued that the higher education provisions of the act unconstitutionally chill free expression and mandate faculty censorship on the state’s college campuses. In today’s ruling, a majority of the Eleventh Circuit panel agreed.
“Today’s important decision means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics — even if politicians disagree with them,” said FIRE senior attorney Greg H. Greubel. “Today’s ruling makes clear something we’ve known for a long time: Governments cannot censor their way to freedom.” (Emphasis mine)
Originally signed into law in April 2022, it was a foregone conclusion that the Stop WOKE Act would be found unconstitutional, but that didn’t stop DeSantis’ from pursuing his fascist anti-free-speech agenda.
The first conclusion came to fruition in June 2022; the second was realized in August 2022 when a federal judge ruled that efforts under the Stop WOKE Act to constrain workplace sensitivity training violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In his 44-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee wrote at the time: “Florida’s legislators may well find plaintiffs’ speech ‘repugnant.’ But under our constitutional scheme, the ‘remedy’ for repugnant speech is more speech, not enforced silence. Indeed, it is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail.” (Emphasis mine)
As is his right, DeSantis appealed this ruling with the 11th District Court of Appeals where he lost again in March 2023 when the court denied DeSantis’ attempt to lift the lower court’s ruling. Still, DeSantis denied that his anti-free-speech bill was unconstitutional. “The court did not rule on the merits of our appeal,” DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said in a statement at the time. “The appeal is ongoing, and we remain confident that the law is constitutional.”
While the appeal did indeed go on, the second ruling by the 11th District Court of Appeals just handed down concluded that DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act was absolutely unconstitutional.
The Stop WOKE Act is just the latest assault in a long line of assaults on free speech by Ron DeSantis. In February 2021, DeSantis took an early swing at free speech when he proposed state legislation to crack down on Big Tech for their alleged bias against conservatives.
In May 2021, DeSantis signed the “Transparency in Technology Act” (TTA) into law, claiming that it would “[protect] the speech of Floridians who face being removed from social-media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.” Conveniently left out of his comments about the law was the part mentioning the massive fines to be levied against social media companies if they removed political candidates from their platforms. The TTA went down in defeat in July 2021 when a federal judge blocked it because it violated free speech rights.
During the 2024 Republican primary season, the man Steve Deace praised at the time as the “not-Trump” presidential candidate made his war with free speech and the First Amendment foundational to his 2024 presidential ambitions. And in June 2025, DeSantis played his “Trump card” (pardon the pun) when he went after the free press by attacking an Orlando Sentinel reporter for posting “negative statements” about the Florida First Lady’s Hope Florida initiative in an unsigned letter posted on social media (via USAToday.com):
By sending and posting on social media an unsigned cease-and-desist letter to an Orlando Sentinel reporter, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration infringed on press freedom by demanding that reporting stop about an initiative spearheaded by his wife, First Amendment attorneys say.
The letter could be construed as “prior restraint,” according to Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in First Amendment law. Prior restraint is when the government tries to stop the press from publishing something before it’s printed or broadcast, which is generally considered unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Calvert said the letter and the administration’s attendant social media attention on it also fall into a pattern created by President Donald Trump of creating a “hostile environment for the news media.” Calvert referred to the Trump administration’s threats to defund public media and barring the Associated Press from White House events. (Emphasis mine)
Regardless of government’s opposition to the so-called “woke” agenda, the First Amendment protects private individuals and entities from people government’s attempt to silence speech or the press. Still, Ron DeSantis continues to confirm what many people have come to know about him: he’s not a conservative in the traditional meaning of the word. Instead, he’s a Trump-inspired nationalist and fascist.
Nationalists believe traditional conservatism has paid too much attention to freedom. Nationalists believe that traditional conservatism has grown infatuated with limited government when bigger government is needed. Nationalists claim to reject the socialist belief that the state can and should dictate economic activity, yet they embrace the fascists call for big government to rein in the free market in the name of protecting “national” interests.
In an appearance at the September 2022 National Conservatism Conference, DeSantis accused “corporate America” of having too much power and using his “success” as governor of Florida, he openly advocated the use of government power against people who don’t meet government’s expectations (via BusinessInsider.com):
In his hourlong speech, DeSantis said the Republican Party’s thinking about big business needs to change, arguing that his experiences in Florida provide a “lesson for people on the right.”
He accused “corporate America” of having too much power in America and of “exercising quasi-public power in terms of using their economic power to change policy in this country.”
“What I’m doing is using government to give space to the individual citizen to be able to participate in society to be able to speak his or her mind,” DeSantis said. “And I think that’s an absolutely appropriate use of government power.” (Emphasis mine)
Call me old fashioned, but I remember the time when government was supposed to protect the rights of individual citizens, not create them. But hey, that’s just me.
Instead of standing as a defender of conservative values like free market capitalism, free speech, and a free press, Governor Ron DeSantis embraces nationalist and fascist ideals guaranteed to destroy liberty like the destruction of the First Amendment.
There’s a heart of fascism beating within the chest of Trumpist Republicans like Ron DeSantis, a man ready, willing, and able to wield the hammer and sickle of big government against people and businesses taking a stand to defend the Constitution — men and women unafraid of fighting against unconstitutional laws like the Stop Woke Act.
Liberty-loving conservatives need to stop putting their confidence in spineless Republican cowards like the Florida governor and the rest of the Republican Party . . . and the time to do so is NOW!
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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