Eleventh Circuit Court Enjoins Florida Anti Woke Law - The National Law Review
In a new skirmish in the volatile ESG and culture wars, a Florida federal court preliminarily enjoined enforcement of portions of Florida’s “anti-woke” law, which prohibits employers from requiring employees to attend training sessions or other activities that “espouse” or “promote” eight “concepts” relating to race, color, sex, or national origin. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker held in Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. DeSantis (N.D. Fla. Aug. 18, 2022), that the statute is a “naked viewpoint-based regulation on speech,” in violation of the First Amendment, and also is unconstitutionally vague.
The Florida statute and the ensuing litigation illustrate the ongoing tensions between some employers’ efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) in the workplace and the political sensibilities of certain constituencies that claim to be offended by ESG-related measures. The Honeyfund decision, if ultimately upheld, should provide some comfort to employers that seek to advance DEI and other ESG objectives and could help protect them against retaliatory content-based governmental actions affecting speech.
Statutory Background
In 2022, Florida enacted the Individual Freedom Act (the “IFA”), which Governor DeSantis called the “Stop Woke Act.” The IFA amends the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992 by expanding the definition of an unlawful employment practice to include requiring employees to attend training or other “required activity” that “espouses, promotes,...
Read Full Story: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/court-preliminarily-enjoins-florida-s-st...