DeSantis's WOKE Act is 1st amendment free speech censorhip and has been stopped as unconstituional by the judicial system
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...is-individual-freedom-act-free-speech/672211/
Ron DeSantis’s Speech Policing Could Hurt the Right Too
Someday, progressives may be in a position to abuse a new Florida law.
By Conor Friedersdorf
This fall, the ACLU, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) all sought a preliminary injunction against enforcing the law. The groups argued (among other things) that it violates the First Amendment rights of college professors by imposing restrictions on disfavored viewpoints. As FIRE
put it in a legal brief in support of a preliminary injunction, “Laws that suppress the expression of ideas violate the First Amendment, no matter how ‘controversial’ or ‘offensive’ lawmakers might find those ideas. Government officials ‘cannot make principled distinctions’ between what is or is not too ‘offensive’ to hear—especially when it comes to the ‘dissemination of ideas’ at state universities.”
In October, an
exchange between Walker and Charles J. Cooper, one of Florida’s lawyers, showed how severe and lasting a blow the law would strike against free speech if it were upheld. Walker asked whether the state wanted all professors at public institutions “to read from the same page of music.” Cooper maintained that it didn’t—with one “narrow, narrow exception”: Referring to the eight forbidden concepts listed in the law, he said, “These particular eight concepts, which we believe are racially discriminatory and repugnant, we are not going to permit professors speaking in our State-prescribed curriculum, in our classrooms, on our time, accepting our paychecks to express these particular viewpoints.”
According to the transcript, the judge then asked Cooper whether, 15 years from now, after a change of government, “the State of Florida could prohibit the instruction on American exceptionalism because it alienates people of color … and other disadvantaged groups because it suggests that America doesn’t have a darker side that needs to be qualified.”
“Yes,” Cooper said. He added that the state can dictate what will and won’t be taught in college classrooms 15 years from today as surely as today, even if its political profile changes completely. In the future, the Florida legislature could, by the logic of the state’s legal reasoning, prohibit professors from promoting color-blind admissions, meritocracy, individualism, and capitalism if a majority of legislators deemed them racially discriminatory and repugnant.
In fact, a striking passage in Florida’s
legal brief opposing the preliminary injunction states, “Even if the First Amendment did apply here, Florida’s compelling interest in stamping out discrimination based on race and other immutable characteristics amply justifies any burden on speech the Act may impose.”
The explicit defense of the bill is that fighting whatever politicians dub racism on campus is more important than the First Amendment.
www.theguardian.com
