A group of professors in Florida filed a federal lawsuit against the 2023 state law banning teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion, claiming that it restricts freedom of speech.
The law was enacted as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke,” meaning any teaching about or practice related to DEI.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
TALLAHASSEE — A group of Florida university professors on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a 2023 state law and related regulations that prevent colleges from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, saying the restrictions are “punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints.”
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP on behalf of six professors, alleges that the restrictions violate educators’ and students’ speech rights and is chilling expression in public universities. It targets the 2023 law (SB 266) and rules passed last year by the state university system’s Board of Governors.
“Continuing its effort to police the marketplace of ideas, the Florida Legislature again passed vague, viewpoint-discriminatory legislation that broadly restricts academic freedom and imposes the state’s favored viewpoints on public higher education, punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints,” the lawsuit said.
The restrictions ban funding for programs or campus activities that advocate for diversity, equity, or inclusion or that engage in “political or social activism.”
One of the rules defines DEI as “any program, campus activity, or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.” Colleges and universities risk losing funding if they violate the restrictions.
The lawsuit alleged that the regulations’ definitions are “ambiguous, inconsistent, and far too broad to provide any real guidance other than indicating the Legislature’s and the BOG’s (Board of Governors’) intent to disfavor certain speech.”
The restrictions “have left instructors and students fearful for the future of not only education, but also free thought and democracy in Florida,” the professors’ lawyers wrote.
The rules have “stripped hundreds of university courses” from being designated as “general education” courses, according to the lawsuit. Universities also have denied scholarship and research money to faculty and students who have received it in the past.
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