Resources
Additional Information
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Incident Nature:
Course Content
Lawsuit
Other
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Incident Political Orientation:
Not Clear -
Incident Responses:
Litigation
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Incident Status:
In litigation Federal District Court
In litigation Federal Court of Appeals
- Was Speech Code incident
Summary
On August 18, 2022, several Florida university professors filed a federal complaint challenging the “Stop WOKE Act,” formally known as the Individual Freedom Act, alleging that it violated the First Amendment by restricting classroom instruction based on viewpoint. The Act had been signed into law in April 2022 and took effect on July 1, 2022. It prohibited instruction that could make students feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on the basis of race or sex and restricted the teaching of certain concepts related to systemic racism and sexism in public university courses.
In November 2022, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the Act’s higher education provisions. The court held that the statute targeted speech based on content and viewpoint and restricted “core political speech” in the classroom. The order found that the law imposed an unconstitutional limitation on professors’ expression and that faculty were likely to self-censor rather than risk discipline under the statute.
Florida appealed the injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, arguing that instruction in public university classrooms constituted government speech subject to legislative control. The plaintiffs maintained that faculty speech in the classroom is protected by the First Amendment and that the Act imposed an official orthodoxy on permissible viewpoints. Enforcement of the challenged provisions remained enjoined while the appeal was pending.
On July 7, 2026, the Eleventh Circuit issued a 2–1 decision affirming the preliminary injunction and holding that the Act’s higher education provisions were unconstitutional. The majority concluded that the statute imposed viewpoint-based restrictions on professors’ speech and rejected the argument that such instruction was government speech. The court determined that the law sought to “impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints” in violation of the First Amendment.
The decision barred enforcement of the Act in public universities and left the injunction in place, maintaining that the challenged provisions could not be applied to faculty instruction.
