First Amendment Protects Universities From Florida's Stop WOKE Act |
First Amendment
First Amendment Protects Universities From Florida's Stop WOKE Act
In the U.S., government officials aren’t allowed to fight ideas they don’t like with censorship.
J.D. Tuccille | 7.13.2026 7:00 AM
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(Daniel A. Varela/TNS/Newscom)
The cure for a regime of establishment-approved ideology does not come from government censorship of conversations. That should be clear to anybody who believes in freedom, and it's a point strongly made by a federal appeals court in overruling Florida's Stop WOKE Act. Saying the First Amendment is incompatible with "an official government line—in a college classroom of all places," the court overruled the state's effort to battle ideological orthodoxy by imposing its own orthodoxy.
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Florida Tries to Cure 'The Woke Mind Virus'
"A federal court on Tuesday [July 7] struck down part of a law signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that aimed to restrict colleges, schools and workplaces from promoting certain viewpoints on racism, sexism and history," the Florida Courier's Kerry Sheridan Wusf reported last week.
The 2022 law was a high-profile response to peak social justice activism. After the passage of what is widely called the Stop WOKE Act, DeSantis told the National Conservatism conference that "in Florida, parents should be able to send their kid to elementary school without having woke gender ideology shoved down their throat." He went on to refer to the prevailing ideology in many academic institutions and corporate H.R. departments as "the woke mind........