Pernell v. Florida Board of Governors is a federal First Amendment lawsuit challenging Florida’s Individual Freedom Act, better known as the Stop WOKE Act, as applied to public university classrooms. Filed in 2022, the case produced a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law at state universities, and that injunction has stayed in place throughout the appeal. As of early 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has heard oral arguments but has not yet ruled, which means Florida cannot enforce the classroom restrictions against professors or students while the court deliberates.
The Law Being Challenged
In 2022, Florida enacted HB 7, which amended Florida Statute 1000.05 to redefine discrimination in public schools and universities.1The Florida Senate. Florida Code 1000.05 – Discrimination Against Students and Employees in the Florida K-20 Public Education System Prohibited Under the amended statute, a public university commits discrimination if it subjects students or employees to instruction that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” belief in eight specific concepts about race, sex, color, or national origin.
The eight concepts largely target ideas associated with critical race theory and related academic frameworks. Among them: that one race or sex is morally superior to another; that a person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive because of their race or sex; that moral character or status as privileged or oppressed is determined by race or sex; that a person bears responsibility for past actions committed by others of the same race or sex; and that virtues like merit, hard work, and colorblindness are themselves racist constructs.1The Florida Senate. Florida Code 1000.05 – Discrimination Against Students and Employees in the Florida K-20 Public Education System Prohibited
The statute includes what supporters call an “objectivity” clause. Professors may still discuss the prohibited concepts as part of a larger course, so long as the discussion is conducted “in an objective manner without endorsement.” The plaintiffs argue this distinction collapses in practice. A professor teaching the history of racial inequality cannot present scholarly arguments about systemic privilege without appearing to endorse at least some of the listed concepts, and no one in the classroom can tell in advance which side of the line a given lecture will fall on.
Who Sued and What They Argued
The plaintiffs include university professors and students at Florida’s public institutions. They brought two main constitutional claims against the Florida Board of Governors.
Viewpoint Discrimination and Academic Freedom
The core First Amendment argument is that the law is viewpoint-based censorship. A professor is permitted to argue that colorblindness is a virtue but forbidden from arguing that colorblindness can mask racial inequality. The state has picked a side and banned the other. Laws that target specific viewpoints rather than entire subject areas face the most skeptical form of judicial review, known as strict scrutiny.
The plaintiffs anchor their academic freedom argument in Supreme Court precedent describing the college classroom as “peculiarly the marketplace of ideas,” where the state’s usual authority over its employees runs into hard First Amendment limits. The complication is Garcetti v. Ceballos, a 2006 Supreme Court decision holding that public employees speaking as part of their official duties lose First Amendment protection against employer discipline. If Garcetti applies to professors, Florida can regulate classroom speech the way any employer regulates job performance. But the Garcetti opinion itself flagged this question, with Justice Kennedy writing that the Court was not deciding “whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.” Pernell asks the Eleventh Circuit to answer that open question.
Student plaintiffs make a related claim: the First Amendment protects their right to receive information and ideas, and censoring what professors can say necessarily limits what students can learn.
Vagueness Under the Fourteenth Amendment
Separately, the plaintiffs argue the law is unconstitutionally vague. The statute never defines where legitimate discussion ends and prohibited endorsement begins. A sociology professor who assigns readings on structural racism and then facilitates a class debate might be presenting the material objectively or promoting a viewpoint, depending entirely on who is watching. That ambiguity, the plaintiffs argue, chills protected speech: professors who cannot predict what will trigger an investigation avoid sensitive topics altogether.
Judge Walker’s Preliminary Injunction
In November 2022, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the Individual Freedom Act at Florida’s public universities. The order barred the Florida Board of Governors from enforcing Sections 1000.05(4)(a) and (b) and the Board’s implementing Regulation 10.005.2GovInfo. Pernell et al v. Florida Board of Governors of the State University System et al
Judge Walker’s opinion was unusually blunt. He opened by quoting the first line of Orwell’s 1984 and called the state’s position “positively dystopian,” writing that Florida’s claim to support academic freedom while banning disfavored viewpoints amounted to doublespeak. He found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on both the First Amendment and vagueness claims.2GovInfo. Pernell et al v. Florida Board of Governors of the State University System et al
Florida’s central defense relied on the government speech doctrine. The state argued that because professors are public employees delivering a state-funded curriculum, their classroom speech is the government’s own speech and can be controlled like any other government message. Judge Walker rejected that reasoning. He concluded the state cannot convert all university instruction into government speech simply by employing the people who deliver it. Accepting that argument, he reasoned, would treat every public university professor as reading from a government script.
Where the Case Stands on Appeal
The Florida Board of Governors appealed the injunction to the Eleventh Circuit and asked the appellate court to stay the injunction so the law could be enforced during the appeal. In March 2023, the Eleventh Circuit denied the stay request, leaving the law blocked at public universities while the appeal moved forward.
Oral arguments took place in June 2024. As of February 2025, the panel had not issued its opinion. The central question on appeal is whether university professors retain First Amendment rights that prevent the state from dictating which viewpoints they may express on topics within the approved curriculum, or whether the government speech doctrine lets Florida control classroom content the way it controls other state employee communications. The oral arguments reflected sharp disagreement between the parties on that threshold question.
Until the Eleventh Circuit rules, the injunction holds. Florida’s Individual Freedom Act remains on the books but cannot be enforced against public university faculty or students.
What the Honeyfund Ruling Signals
The Individual Freedom Act did not stop at universities. It also amended Florida’s civil rights statute to restrict private employers from requiring employees to attend workplace trainings that endorsed the same eight concepts. That provision produced a separate lawsuit, Honeyfund.com Inc. v. Governor of Florida, which moved through the courts on a parallel track.
In March 2024, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction against the private employer provision, holding that the law was “a textbook regulation of core speech protected by the First Amendment” and was likely to fail strict scrutiny.3United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Honeyfund.com Inc et al v. Governor, State of Florida et al The employment context raises somewhat different legal questions than the university context, so Honeyfund does not control the outcome in Pernell. But the same appellate court evaluated the same list of prohibited concepts and found viewpoint discrimination. That reasoning is directly relevant to the panel now considering Pernell.
Why the Case Matters Beyond the Courtroom
The Individual Freedom Act carries financial consequences that reach well past any individual professor. Florida Statute 1001.92 ties compliance to performance-based funding: a university with a substantiated violation of the prohibited-concepts provision loses eligibility for performance funding the following fiscal year.4The Florida Senate. Florida Code 1001.92 – State University System Institution Performance-Based Incentive For Florida’s larger research universities, that funding runs into the tens of millions annually.
The funding penalty creates pressure that flows downhill. Administrators facing potential budget cuts have incentives to monitor classroom content and restrict faculty speech even in cases where the speech would likely survive legal challenge. The plaintiffs point to this institutional self-censorship as a concrete harm the law produces whether or not the state ever files a formal complaint.
Florida’s public universities are also accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, whose principles explicitly protect “the right of faculty members to teach, investigate, and publish freely” and “the right of students to access opportunities for learning and for the open expression and exchange of ideas.”5Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. The Principles of Accreditation – Foundations for Quality Enhancement State-mandated restrictions on classroom speech sit uncomfortably alongside those standards, adding another layer to what administrators must weigh if the injunction is ever lifted.
The outcome in Pernell will not just settle one Florida statute. It will tell every state in the Eleventh Circuit, and influence courts beyond it, how far a legislature can go in deciding which ideas public university professors are allowed to defend in front of their students.