Fortunately, a judge stands in the way of regulatory mischief.
Federal judge temporarily blocks Florida 'Stop WOKE ACT'
Excerpted...
A federal judge has granted an injunction
temporarily blocking a key aspect of
Florida’s new law that restricts workplaces from implementing “woke” training about race relations.
In a
44-page decision filed on Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker criticized the Stop WOKE Act as “bordering on unintelligible” and granted a temporary injunction, ruling that provisions of the law violate the First Amendment. The ruling comes less than two months after the law took effect, restricting what workplaces can implement in their employee training.
COMPANIES SUE FLORIDA OVER ‘STOP WOKE ACT,’ ALLEGING FREE SPEECH VIOLATIONS
“In the popular television series
Stranger Things, the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world,” Walker wrote, referencing the science fiction Netflix show. “Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”
The injunction halts the state from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act, which forbids companies from including eight concepts in their employee training, including ideas that promote critical race theory or suggestions that one “bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the legislation in April, and the law took effect in July. Several businesses challenged the law, arguing the legislation violates their First Amendment rights and is too vague to enforce.