Overview
- A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a 2–1 decision that affirmed a lower court’s preliminary injunction against the law’s higher-education provisions, a ruling released Tuesday that keeps those rules unenforceable while the case continues.
- Judge Britt Grant wrote for the majority that Florida’s claim—that paying professors’ salaries makes their classroom remarks state speech—was an unconstitutional attempt to censor viewpoints and a “breathtaking assertion of power” to ban ideas from public college classrooms.
- The challenge was brought by professors and students represented by civil-rights and free-speech groups including the ACLU, ACLU of Florida, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ballard Spahr and FIRE, who argued the law’s ban on eight specified notions about race, sex and origin amounted to viewpoint-based censorship.
- The opinion leaves Florida able to seek rehearing by the full 11th Circuit or to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, and it follows a separate 2024 11th Circuit ruling that struck down the law’s workplace-training limits while the law’s K–12 rules remain the subject of other legal fights.
- The decision safeguards academic freedom for public-university faculty and students in Florida by letting instructors continue to teach and discuss contested ideas without the threat of state funding penalties or employment sanctions, and it could influence how similar “divisive concept” laws are litigated in other states.