Governor Ron DeSantis — Courtesy: Shutterstock — Julie Hansen
The contentious Individual Freedom Act, often known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” which set limitations on how Republican lawmakers and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis handled racial issues in workplace training, has been permanently halted by a federal judge.
The Republican governor signed a number of measures in 2022, including this one, as part of his campaign against “woke ideology.” Its goal was to stop workplace mandates and instructional materials from suggesting that a person is oppressed or privileged because of their national origin, gender, race, or color.
A two-page judgment granting a permanent injunction against the law’s workplace training provisions was issued by Chief US District Judge Mark Walker on Friday. According to the order, the statute “violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution’s guarantees of free speech.”
In August 2022, Walker first issued the preliminary injunction to prevent the state from imposing requirements on workplace activities and trainings. Walker claimed that the act “is impermissibly vague in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and discriminates on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment.”
The judge’s decision on Friday followed a federal appeals court’s March upholding of the injunction, finding that a portion of the statute violated the free speech rights of businesses.
DeSantis’ office disagreed with the decision at the time, stating in a statement that it upheld the notion that “companies have a right to indoctrinate their employees with racist and discriminatory ideologies.”
In June 2022, a number of Florida companies filed a challenge against the law through Protect Democracy, a self-described “nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group.”
Shalini Goel Agarwal, attorney for Protect Democracy, wrote on X on Friday, saying, “(This is) a powerful reminder that the First Amendment cannot be warped to serve the interests of elected officials.” “Restricting business owners’ ability to voice their support for ideas that politicians disagree with is a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”
Supporters of the “Stop WOKE Act” have positioned DeSantis as a fighter against “indoctrination.” During his failed presidential campaign, he made repeated allusions to the statute, claiming that Florida was the state where “woke people go to die.”
In the current political context in the United States, the term has become divisive, denoting for some awareness of history, oppression, and social justice concerns and, for others, a derogatory term used to criticize progressive activism and specific racial education.
DeSantis did not object to the request to make the March verdict permanent, but he did reaffirm Florida’s right to offer employee protections at a news conference on Monday in Tampa.
You are free to refuse to participate in awakened training, which is essentially racial discrimination against people. It’s not a matter of what the business can state,” he declared. “They are free to say whatever they like.”
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Melissa’s career in writing started more than 20 years ago. Today, she lives in South Florida with her husband and two boys.
