In a rare instance of a federal appeals court in Florida siding against DeSantis, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected restrictions that Republican lawmakers placed on addressing race-related issues in workplace training.
The restrictions were part of a controversial 2022 law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act.” The law also included similar restrictions on classroom instruction.
The workplace-training part of the law listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”
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The appeals court ruled that the restrictions violated First Amendment rights.
“This is not the first era in which Americans have held widely divergent views on important areas of morality, ethics, law and public policy,” the 22-page opinion said. “And it is not the first time that these disagreements have seemed so important, and their airing so dangerous, that something had to be done. But now, as before, the First Amendment keeps the government from putting its thumb on the scale.”
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