Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his allies in the state legislature have been leading the charge against woke corporations. But this week the enforcement of one of their new laws, the Individual Freedom Act (popularly known as the “Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act” or “Stop WOKE Act”) was paused after U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker issued a preliminary injunction against it.
The law bans workplace exercises in diversity training that the legislature believes make for a hostile workplace. Specifically, it prohibits trainings that suggest that a worker might bear “personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part.” The law also bans companies from including training that says a worker, “by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” among other things.
According to the plaintiffs in the suit — a couple of Florida businesses and a workplace diversity consultancy — this violates freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment. The state is now barred from enforcing the law pending the judge’s final ruling on its constitutionality.
The law never stood much of a chance before an Obama-appointed district court judge with a long history of ruling against the acts of Florida’s Republican governors and legislature. But even as Judge Walker’s opinion is being celebrated on the political Left for its scathing tone and hip pop-culture references, the actual legal reasoning raises deeper questions about anti-discrimination laws and free speech in the workplace.
The Stop WOKE Act is essentially a ban on several topics being discussed in the workplace. On its face, that sounds like a free speech problem — private citizens are being told that they may not say certain things, under penalty of law. A plain reading of the First Amendment suggests that free people should be free to discuss whatever they want. If that means making your employees sit through boring or obnoxious lectures by overpaid consultants, so be it. It’s a free country.
Florida says that forcing workers to endure these trainings constitutes workplace discrimination by creating a “hostile work environment.” This takes a longstanding thread of left-leaning jurisprudence — “hostile work environment” reasoning is what allows companies to ban racist and sexist speech — and applies it to right-wing aims, which the judge believes “trivializes” the aims of civil rights protections for workers.
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