'Breathtaking assertion of power': Appeals court slams door on Florida 'Stop Woke' law championed by DeSantis

(Politico) TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida's anti-woke law restricting how lessons on race and gender can be taught in colleges and universities — policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — violates the free speech rights of professors, a panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday.

The decision from a divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is a devastating, possibly final blow to the so-called Stop WOKE Act touted by the DeSantis administration. The judges affirmed a 2022 decision that labeled Florida's rules as "positively dystopian," doubling down by arguing the law is "a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse" in the very classroom space where students are supposed to "puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth."

"If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it," Judge Britt C. Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/breathtaking-assertion-power-appeals-court-182536587.html