Federal Court Blocks Florida Ban On Critical Race Theory Indoctrination In Colleges

A federal appeals court struck down the higher education restrictions of Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” that restricts critical race theory (CRT) indoctrination in the state’s public colleges and universities.

Breitbart News reports that the ruling pertains to the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop WOKE Act), which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed in 2022.

CRT is a Marxist ideology which “claims that all of our institutions — our government, our economy, our culture — are based on racial hierarchy, with whites on top and blacks at the bottom. Even things that look race-neutral are, on closer inspection, racist.”

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the law’s salary-for-speech provision violates the First Amendment, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The decision came in response to two lawsuits brought by professors, students, and a student group who claim the law is unconstitutional censorship and applies specifically to Florida’s public colleges and universities.

Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a Trump appointee, dissented, contending that Florida has interest in regulating state-sponsored instruction.

To be clear, the First Amendment protects all viewpoints in the public square, whether they are conventional or uncontroversial. But it does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in a post on X, argued that the ruling was a “clear and unfortunate” example of judicial overreach, stating, “Florida was correct to bar CRT and DEI. We have a right to do so.”

The split ruling leaves open the opportunity for Florida to pursue a rehearing or appeal to the Supreme Court.

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics, Critical Race Theory and group solidarity. In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by, for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible.

Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our “unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty “are endowed by our Creator,” who made man in His image. Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is “Identity politics - the politics of radical feminism, queer revolution, and Afro-centrism - which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well.” (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998)

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission - the chains of tyranny - is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left’s revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children’s children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill’ where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left’s revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

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