What’s New
In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, six Florida professors are challenging a state law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that sought to stamp out “woke” ideology from public colleges.
Senate Bill 266, which DeSantis, a Republican, signed into law in 2023, prevents those institutions from spending state or federal money on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and mandates that “general-education core courses” cannot teach “identity politics” or “distort significant historical events,” among other things.
In their complaint, the professors argue that, as a result of SB 266, their “curricula and expressive activity have been fundamentally restrained and chilled,” violating their First Amendment rights.
The Details
The six professors work at the University of Florida, Florida State University, and Florida International University. They filed the suit in federal court for the Northern District of Florida against their institutions’ Boards of Trustees and against the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s university system. The professors are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Broadly, the lawsuit argues that SB 266 is “vague, viewpoint-discriminatory legislation” that “restricts academic freedom and imposes the state’s favored viewpoints on public higher education, punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints.”
Much of the complaint focuses on SB 266’s general-education restrictions. It argues that, in attempting to comply with the law’s “vague provisions,” universities have weeded out courses that previously counted toward their institutions’ general-education curriculum. At Florida State, for example, 14 of the 17 courses that its English department offered as part of general education no longer qualify, says the complaint.
Allowing this law to stand continues a dangerous precedent, emboldening other states to adopt similar measures and casting a chilling effect on academic inquiry nationwide.
Such a move “puts entire departments’ financial viability at risk,” imposes “administrative and psychological burdens on professors,” and “robs students of the opportunity to take these courses while also progressing toward their degrees in other fields of study,” the lawsuit argues.
One of the plaintiffs, Sharon Austin, a political-science professor at the University of Florida, contends that her university denied her funding request to attend an international conference hosted by an organization called Diversity Abroad, to which she was invited to present her work. According to the complaint, she was told in an email that, due to SB 266, “state dollars may not be used” to pay for the conference.
Austin, who, according to the lawsuit, also had two courses — “Politics of Race” and “Black Horror and Social Justice” — removed from her institution’s general-education offerings, said in a statement issued by the ACLU of Florida that the law “forces educators to self-censor, depriving students of a comprehensive education.”
A spokesperson for the university system said in an email that the Board of Governors does not comment on pending litigation.
The Backdrop
Florida has been a breeding ground for higher-ed reform in recent years, as DeSantis has taken aim at what he sees as the sector’s hostility to viewpoints that do not conform to progressive political orthodoxy. Perhaps the most prominent example is what was dubbed the Stop WOKE Act, which sought to ban instruction that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students to believe certain ideas about race. (Austin was also a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the Stop WOKE Act, which DeSantis signed into law in 2022. It was then placed under preliminary injunction as it applies to state universities.)
More recently the governor has criticized DEI programs in higher ed. At a May 2023 news conference, DeSantis said that, in effect, they are “used as a veneer to impose an ideological agenda.” He said that SB 266 will reorient colleges back to their traditional mission, part of which is treating people as individuals and not trying to “divvy them up based on any type of superficial characteristics.”
The Stakes
Supporters of the bill, which was sweeping in its effects on Florida higher ed, have argued that the measure is necessary to rebalance academe’s one-sided politics. They point to the public’s cratering confidence in the sector and express concerns about professors pushing their ideological agendas onto students, along with overreach and speech-policing from DEI officials. All of those criticisms extend well beyond the Sunshine State. State legislatures across the country have introduced measures that restrict training or instruction on “divisive concepts,” block colleges from having DEI offices or staff, prevent mandatory diversity training, or bar the use of diversity statements in hiring. (Professors and students in Alabama filed a federal lawsuit against one such measure on Tuesday.)
Critics of SB 266 also see the fight as bigger than just one law in one state. “Allowing this law to stand continues a dangerous precedent, emboldening other states to adopt similar measures and casting a chilling effect on academic inquiry nationwide,” said Jerry Edwards, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida, in the organization’s statement. “The future of intellectual freedom in American universities is at stake, and we must act now to defend it.”
