TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Thirteen states have lined up behind Florida at the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to take up and uphold the state's Individual Freedom Act — the 2022 law widely known as the Stop WOKE Act — which restricts what professors at public universities may promote in the classroom about race, sex and national origin. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced on November 10 that he had co-led a 13-state amicus brief with Kentucky in the case, Florida Board of Governors v. Pernell, urging the Court to reverse a federal appeals court decision that held the law likely violates professors' First Amendment right to academic freedom.

Source: Alabama Attorney General's Office, Nov. 10, 2026

The brief asks the Supreme Court to grant Florida's petition for review and to hold, in the coalition's words, that public university professors do not have veto power over their public employer over how and what they may teach in class. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier's petition asks the justices to decide whether public university professors have a special status under the First Amendment, so that speech they express in the course of their official duties is protected from regulation by the state that employs them, unlike the official-duty speech of all other public employees.

What Florida's law actually says

Under the Individual Freedom Act (Chapter 2022-72, Laws of Florida), professors at public universities are prohibited from compelling students to believe any of eight listed concepts, including that “members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex,” according to the Alabama Attorney General's summary of the law. Professors may still discuss the concepts as part of a larger course of instruction, the summary notes, but they may not promote them or require students to believe them.

The law was challenged by a group of public university professors who argued that it abridged their right to academic freedom under the First Amendment. The litigation combined two lawsuits: one led by LeRoy Pernell, a law professor at Florida A&M University, and another filed in 2022 by University of South Florida Latin American history professor Adriana Novoa and a student, according to Florida Phoenix reporting on the appeals court ruling. The professors' cases were argued by attorneys with the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

How the appeals court ruled in July

In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the law likely violates the professors' First Amendment right to academic freedom, affirming lower-court rulings against the state. Writing for the majority in a 52-page ruling, Judge Britt Grant concluded that students must be free to hear and consider even officially disfavoured ideas presented by professors, Florida Phoenix reported; Judge Charles Wilson joined the majority and Judge Barbara Lagoa dissented. It was the second Eleventh Circuit loss for Florida on the same statute: in 2024 the court had already ruled unconstitutional a separate part of the law that restricted mandatory private workplace training.

Florida's response was to go to the Supreme Court. In his petition, Attorney General Uthmeier asks the justices to clarify the Court's 2006 ruling in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which held that the First Amendment protects public officials' private speech but not remarks made while they exercise their official duties, Inside Higher Ed reported on November 12. Responding to the July ruling on X, Uthmeier had called the majority's reasoning “totally incoherent and inconsistent with the intent of the First Amendment,” according to Florida Phoenix.

The two arguments now before the Court

The 13-state brief argues that the Court should treat public university professors just like other public employees, who do not have a First Amendment right in their official, on-the-job speech on behalf of the government. While academic freedom is an important societal norm, the brief argues, it cannot be read into the First Amendment to give professors special rights at the expense of the academic freedom of students and universities. “Academic freedom is a vital principle, but not a trump card,” Attorney General Marshall said in the coalition's November 10 statement. “No public employee, whether a professor, teacher, or a clerk, get a bigger share of the First Amendment than anyone else.”

Source: Alabama Attorney General's Office, Nov. 10, 2026

On the other side, the professors and their supporters argue that classroom teaching is exactly the kind of speech the First Amendment's academic-freedom tradition protects, and that a state legislature deciding which ideas may be promoted in a university classroom is government control over scholarship itself. Robert Post, a professor at Yale Law School, told Inside Higher Ed that if the Supreme Court takes up the case, the petition “has the potential to do enormous damage to public universities.” The American Civil Liberties Union and FIRE, which represented the challengers below, have defended the Eleventh Circuit's ruling on that basis.

What happens next

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear the case. Granting review requires the votes of four justices; if the Court agrees to take it, the parties would file full merits briefs and argue the case in a later sitting, with a decision expected by the end of a term rather than in the coming weeks. Until then, the Eleventh Circuit's ruling stands and Florida's restrictions remain blocked at its public universities. For students and faculty — including the large international and diaspora communities at Florida's public universities in the Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Tallahassee areas — the case will decide whether the state or the professor has the final say over what may be taught and promoted in a public classroom, a question with direct echoes in every state that has passed or debated a similar law.