Comparing Florida’s approach to First Amendment issues to a parallel dimension portrayed in the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” a Florida federal judge has granted an injunction against provisions of the “Stop WOKE Act” that restrict workforce diversity training.
In an Aug. 18 opinion, Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida enjoined the state attorney general and members of the Florida Commission on Human Relations from prohibiting employers from discussing certain concepts relating to gender, race or national origin during mandatory employment training, as is required by the new law.
The First Amendment generally prevents the state from clamping down on free speech, while private entities can place restrictions on free expression, Walker wrote, adding that in Florida these truisms are reversed.
“Now, like the heroine in “Stranger Things,” this court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down,” he wrote. “... Because the challenged provision of the (Individual Freedom) Act is a naked viewpoint-based regulation on speech that does not pass strict scrutiny, plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction … is granted in part.”
Several businesses, represented by the group Protect Democracy and Ropes & Gray LLC, are challenging the Stop WOKE Act’s employment provisions. Critics have called the new law vague and unconstitutional and argued that it prevents employers from talking honestly with employees about systemic racial and gender bias in the workplace.
“Defendants argue that Florida has an interest in preventing employers from ‘foisting speech that the state finds repugnant on a “captive audience” of employees’ …” Walker wrote. “Not so. The First Amendment does not give the state license to censor speech because it finds it ‘repugnant,’ no matter how captive the audience.”