A civil liberties group is urging Florida colleges and universities to narrowly interpret or even defy a new state law that opponents say puts unconstitutional restraints on the academic freedom of professors.
House Bill 7, dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act,” was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last week. HB7 prohibits instruction in K-12 and higher education that espouses or compels a student to embrace certain topics, including race- and gender-related subjects, such as critical race theory, a legislative staff analysis of the bill indicates.
The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent letters to 40 public colleges and universities in the state, urging university officials to apply the law cautiously or not at all. FIRE is also keeping its options open on whether to file a lawsuit against the new law.
“There are provisions in HB 7 that unconstitutionally regulate what can be discussed in the college classroom,” Joe Cohn, FIRE’s legislative & policy director, told the Florida Record in an email. “As long as those provisions remain in effect, faculty across Florida have reason to be concerned about the possibility of unlawful consequences for exercising their academic freedom.”
HB 7’s provision allowing discussion of divisive topics in an “objective manner” does not make the law any more palatable, according to FIRE.
“Faculty members’ ability to confront students with views that are not ‘objective’ – whether through lectures offering Socratic argument, assignment of written materials articulating a thesis or invitations to guest speakers zealously defending a point of view – is an important pedagogical tool,” one of the FIRE letters states. “Academic freedom encompasses not only the right to consider competing views, but to come to a conclusion – that is, to ‘endorse’ an idea – and allow others to contest it.”
FIRE contends that the law disallows First Amendment-protected discussions and would tend to silence classroom topics such as gender pay, affirmative action, reparations for slavery and whether some people may have unconscious biases.
“No statute adopted by a state’s legislature – itself subordinate to the First Amendment by virtue of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause – can authorize an administrator to violate the expressive rights of faculty and students at public institutions,” one of the FIRE letters says.