A federal appeals court has blocked a provision of a new Florida law barring employers from holding mandatory workplace training sessions that embrace race, sex and equity concepts the state deemed offensive.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down the preliminary injunction on March 4, concluding that the employer provision of the state’s “Stop WOKE Act” flies in the face of the First Amendment.
The provision states employers can’t require any person, as a condition of employment, to attend training sessions that promote certain beliefs dealing with race, color, sex or national origin. The law specifically bans the discussion of arguments supporting any kind of discrimination against an individual to achieve diversity, equity or inclusion goals or suggesting that an individual should feel guilt because of actions by ancestors of the same race in the past.
Florida officials argued that the law does not violate the First Amendment because it restricts conduct at employer training sessions rather than speech. But the appeals court rejected the state’s attempt to reclassify speech as conduct.
“Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets,” the court’s opinion states. “Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.”
State officials have argued that the law aimed to protect Floridians from racially hostile workplaces and “invidious discrimination,” but the court found that the state was “putting its thumb on the scale” during an important debate over public policy, morality and ethics.
That provision of the law would have also allowed individuals to file civil lawsuits against employers as a vehicle to enforce the measure, although state regulatory actions could also be used to enforce it.
“Either way, the price of failure is steep,” the decision states. “Employers who require their employees to hear these disfavored ideas can face serious financial penalties – back pay, compensatory damages and up to $100,000 in punitive damages, plus attorney’s fees – on top of injunctive relief.”
One of the groups representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Protect Democracy, expressed hope that the appeals court opinion would end the litigation.
“After the decision by the trial court and this unanimous panel of the 11th Circuit, four federal judges have now come to the unremarkable conclusion that the Stop WOKE Act – a law whose title announces its intent to discriminate based on viewpoint – does indeed discriminate based on viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment,” Shalini Agarwal, the plaintiffs’ lead counsel in the case, told the Florida Record.
Agarwal said the plaintiffs hoped that the state would not continue the litigation by using public funds to achieve what she said was an unconstitutional purpose.
“Florida is the only state in the country that has gone so far with these speech codes directed at diversity, equity and inclusions,” she said.
The 11th Circuit decision quoted the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling New York Times v. Sullivan in its decision.
“The First Amendment ‘presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection,’” the court said. “‘To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.’”