A federal appeals court has shot down Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R) efforts to safeguard higher education in the state from the entrapments of “woke” instruction, including critical race theory (CRT) practices. 

Parts of the Florida law, formally named the Individual Freedom Act, were struck down by a 2-1 majority of judges in the 11th Circuit on Tuesday. Introduced in 2022, the legislation aimed at a return to values of fairness, neutrality, and objectivity in the classroom, and a departure from CRT ideology such as white privilege guilt. 

The act states that classroom students and employee participants may not act on the basis of the false concepts that “A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex” or that “such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.” 

The judges ruled that the part of the law referring to higher education is a violation of the Bill of Rights. “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” judge Britt Grant wrote in the majority opinion. “Hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind. … Florida seeks to strip public university professors — and by extension their students — of the ability to fully engage with ideas that are, for better or for worse, very popular in some academic circles,” the decision continued. 

Grant also declared in the majority opinion that it is the job of the federal court to police the First Amendment. 

“The First Amendment protects all viewpoints in the public square, whether they are conventional or controversial. But it does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement,” Judge Barbara Lagoa said in the dissenting opinion. “We need not agree or disagree with Florida that the viewpoints at issue here constitute racial discrimination; we need only acknowledge that the State is allowed to decide what is endorsed by its professors in its own classrooms.”

LeRoy Pernell, a professor of law at Florida A&M University and one of the lawsuit plaintiffs, was happy with the court ruling allowing for the continuation of critical race ideology in college classrooms. “We are thrilled the court has stopped the erasure of topics that have real implications for our students, allowing them to learn, discuss, and develop tools for combatting the complex issue of racism in our country without being gagged by those who would dictate that only state-approved thought may be promoted,” he said in a statement.

Pernell is the author of the article, “Why I Will Not Stop Teaching Law Students to Think Critically About Race: The Attack on Teaching About the Role of Race in Law,” in which he explains his reasoning for being a proponent of CRT in the classroom. 

“The refusal to recognize that systemic racism is just as pernicious as activity motivated by racial hate, is a form of collective amnesia. This dominant cultural amnesia allows for individuals to take the position ‘I am not responsible for the acts of my ancestors. Therefore, I am not responsible to correct their mistakes,’” Pernell wrote. “This convenient amnesia regarding the connection between the past and the present takes great comfort and obtains much support from the juridical failure of modern Equal Protection doctrine to provide meaningful relief to the current victims of systemic racism, absent the satisfaction of virtually unobtainable proof of current intent to discriminate.”

But experts say that ideologies like CRT amount to racist political activism that have no place inside public classrooms.

“This 11th Circuit ruling is a disappointing setback for efforts to keep divisive racial and gender ideologies out of Florida’s public universities. The Stop WOKE Act was designed to protect students from being taught that they are inherently oppressors or oppressed based on their race or sex,” Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Stand. “Taxpayers fund these institutions, and the state has every right to ensure classrooms focus on education and truth-seeking rather than political activism. I hope Florida appeals this decision and continues defending common-sense policies that put students first.”

According to CNBC, the case will likely continue as Florida can ask for the case to be reheard by the 11th Circuit or appeal it to the Supreme Court.