Overview
Overview
On July 7, a divided panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district court's preliminary injunction barring Florida from enforcing the classroom-instruction provisions of its Individual Freedom Act, also known as the "Stop WOKE Act," against professors at Florida's public colleges and universities. In Pernell v. Florida Board of Governors of the State University System, the court held that the law's viewpoint-based restrictions on postsecondary teaching likely violate the First Amendment. Because the ruling affirms a preliminary injunction rather than a final judgment, further proceedings—including possible en banc or Supreme Court review—remain available. Institutions should treat the decision as a significant but not yet settled marker.
Background
Florida enacted the Individual Freedom Act as part of House Bill 7 on July 1, 2022. As codified at Fla. Stat. § 1000.05(4)(a), the Act prohibits Florida public colleges and universities from subjecting any student or employee to "training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels" that individual to believe any of eight enumerated concepts concerning race, color, national origin, or sex. Among these concepts are that a person is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive by virtue of race or sex, or that virtues such as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are themselves racist or sexist, or were created to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex. The statute permits discussion of those concepts if presented objectively and without endorsement.
In a separate challenge, the Eleventh Circuit declared other parts of the Act unconstitutional in 2024, including provisions that prohibited employers from forcing employees to attend workplace training events on topics including race and inequality.1
The higher-education provisions of the Act were challenged in consolidated lawsuits brought by public university professors, students, and the First Amendment Forum at the University of South Florida. In November 2022, only months after the Act took effect, the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida preliminarily enjoined the higher-education provisions in an opinion describing the law's operation as "positively dystopian."2 The state appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit resolved the consolidated appeals in July 2026.
The Court's Decision
Writing for the majority, Judge Britt Grant, joined by Judge Charles Wilson, concluded that Florida's restrictions likely violate the First Amendment as applied in public colleges and universities. The court emphasized that the law seeks to strip public university professors—and by extension their students—of the ability to fully engage with ideas that state officials find objectionable.
A central issue was whether public university professors' classroom speech should be treated as government speech, allowing the State to control it without significant First Amendment constraints. Florida argued that because professors are public employees whose salaries are paid by the State, their classroom instruction is effectively state speech.
The court disagreed, describing Florida's proposed "salary-for-speech" rule as a "breathtaking assertion of power" that would allow the State to ban unpopular ideas from university discourse.3 According to the majority, public university instruction occupies a constitutionally distinct space in which academic freedom and open inquiry have significant importance. Indeed, "in the university context . . . where the dangers of censorship are heightened, a state prohibiting disfavored messages inspires even more skepticism. The broader the restriction, and the more people whose speech it limits, the more scrutiny it must receive."4
The majority distinguished ordinary curricular decisions, which universities traditionally make, from statewide legislative bans on particular viewpoints. While universities may establish curricula and ensure instruction remains relevant to subject matter, the court concluded that Florida's law crossed the line by broadly suppressing disfavored viewpoints. It also emphasized that the Act's restrictions affected the broader classroom exchange of ideas, including students' ability to engage with disfavored viewpoints in the university setting.
Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote a dissent contending that Florida's public universities speak and act subject to the State's control, and the Act permissibly set standards governing classroom instruction by state employees teaching the State's curriculum. Judge Lagoa also warned that the majority's approach would be difficult to administer because it leaves courts to distinguish between permissible curricular control and unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
Implications for Colleges and Universities
The most immediate significance of the decision is its robust endorsement of First Amendment protections for faculty speech in public university classrooms. Although the court stopped short of recognizing academic freedom as a standalone constitutional right, it repeatedly emphasized that classroom teaching and scholarship receive special constitutional consideration.
For Florida's public institutions, enforcement of the higher-education provisions remains barred. Florida institutions should confirm that any internal policies and reporting mechanisms adopted to implement the Act are consistent with the injunction while the litigation continues.
It remains to be seen how the full Eleventh Circuit, and potentially the Supreme Court, will consider the merits. In the meantime, the Eleventh Circuit's decision marks a setback for one of the most prominent state efforts to regulate instruction concerning race, gender, and equity in higher education. At its core, the court framed the dispute not as a debate about the merits of the prohibited concepts, but as a constitutional question concerning who decides which ideas may be discussed and endorsed in the university classroom. For public institutions within the Eleventh Circuit, the ruling narrows arguments that faculty speech may be treated simply as government speech subject to unrestricted state control.
Institutions outside the Eleventh Circuit should also monitor the litigation closely. Although the decision is binding only within the Eleventh Circuit, it is likely to be cited by challengers to similar "divisive concepts" laws and other state efforts to regulate classroom speech, DEI-related instruction, or training on race, sex, privilege, and systemic discrimination. Public institutions in other jurisdictions should evaluate whether proposed or existing policies seek to regulate curriculum in viewpoint-neutral terms or restrict perspectives in ways that could invite First Amendment challenges. And although private institutions are differently situated for constitutional purposes, they may face related governance, accreditation, contractual or donor-related pressures and should consider the ruling as part of broader risk planning.
1 Honeyfund.Com Inc, et al. v. Governor, State of Florida, et al., No. 22-13135 (11th Cir. 2024).
2 Novoa v. Diaz, No. 4:22-cv-00324 (N.D. Fla. Nov. 17, 2022).
3 Pernell, 2026 WL 1955783.
4 Pernell, 2026 WL 1955783 at * 16.
