Stop WOKE Act news: DEI training ban permanently blocked

A federal district court has permanently blocked provisions of Florida‘s “Stop WOKE Act” that placed limits on the content of workplace diversity and inclusion training by private employers. The court declared that the statute violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution.

The Individual Freedom Act — also known as the Stop WOKE Act — banned workplace trainings from teaching that anyone is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” or that anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race, color, sex or national origin. It also made it illegal to require workers to attend training that promoted such concepts.

In 2022, the same court had issued a preliminary injunction in the case challenging the law. In granting a preliminary injunction to block these provisions, the court found the law to be “a viewpoint-based restriction on speech that presumptively violates the First Amendment.”

The court noted that the law was not targeting training because of its mandatory nature but because of the content of the speech that might be delivered. In short, the Stop WOKE Act targeted only viewpoints with which the state disagreed.

The court issued the Friday order after the injunction was upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on March 4, 2024, agreeing that the law infringed on employers’ free speech rights. The state did not oppose the permanent injunction.