Link to decision [PDF].
Link to article:
A federal appeals court ruled unanimously Monday to block a Florida law preventing businesses from requiring employees to attend workplace trainings that promote diversity and inclusion, affirming a temporary injunction issued by a lower court.
“This is not the first era in which Americans have held widely divergent views on important areas of morality, ethics, law, and public policy,” a three-judge panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in Monday’s decision. “And it is not the first time that these disagreements have seemed so important, and their airing so dangerous, that something had to be done. But now, as before, the First Amendment keeps the government from putting its thumb on the scale.”
I note this decision not because I have strong feelings on this issue (personally, I tend to avoid those topics here), but because one of the major pieces of legislation of the DeSantis agenda has been struck down by judges that are quite conservative. It's a pretty thorough thrashing of the law, written by Trump-appointee Judge Britt Grant (and joined by Trump-appointee Judge Andrew Brasher and Clinton-appointee Judge Charles Wilson).
As the opinion notes:
[...] This law, as Florida concedes, draws its distinctions based on viewpoint—the most pernicious of dividing lines under the First Amendment. But the state insists that ordinary First Amendment review does not apply because the law restricts conduct, not speech.
We cannot agree, and we reject this latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct. Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.
[...]
Florida proposes an alternative approach. It says that even if speech defines the contours of the prohibition, so long as the resulting burden is on the conduct, that conduct is all the state is regulating. That, in turn, means the law does not regulate speech. Remarkable. Under Florida’s proposed standard, a government could ban riding on a parade float if it did not agree with the message on the banner. The government could ban pulling chairs into a circle for book clubs discussing disfavored books. And so on. The First Amendment is not so easily neutered.
Victories protecting the freedom of speech should always be recognized and celebrated.
