ACLJ to Supreme Court: States Can Choose Not To Teach Racial Guilt in Schools

Should a state be allowed to decide that its public universities won’t teach students they are oppressive racists because of the color of their skin? That shouldn’t be a hard question. But a federal appeals court has ruled that determination isn’t for Florida legislators to decide. The ACLJ is asking the Supreme Court to step in.

We filed an amicus brief in Florida Board of Governors v. Pernell (No. 26-475), supporting Florida’s petition for review. The Eleventh Circuit ruled that federal judges get to decide whether the state’s limits on classroom instruction are “reasonable.” In other words, a state that wants to protect its own classrooms has to persuade a judge first. Alabama and twelve other states have also filed in support of Florida, underscoring the importance of this case.

What Florida’s Law Actually Does

In 2022, Florida passed the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act (Chapter 2022-72, Laws of Florida). For public colleges and universities, it says students and employees can’t be subjected to instruction that promotes or compels belief in ideas like these:

• that one race or sex is morally superior to another;
• that a person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive because of his or her race or sex;
• that a person must feel guilt or anguish for things done in the past by others of the same race or sex; or
• that merit, hard work, fairness, and colorblindness are themselves racist.

The law doesn’t ban discussion. It states these ideas can still be covered in a course, as long as they’re presented “in an objective manner without endorsement.” Professors can teach about them, assign them, and debate them. What the state won’t pay its employees to do is tell students they’re true.

Judging people by their race was wrong when segregationists did it, and it’s wrong when it’s disguised today as academia. In the same law, the Florida Legislature declared that “all persons are equal before the law and have inalienable rights,” no person is inherently racist or oppressive solely because of race or sex, and no race is inherently superior to another.

Our argument is rooted in this question: Whose classroom is it? The state of Florida is governed by legislators elected by its citizens. The state university course is listed in the state’s catalog, taught in the state’s classroom, and credited toward the state’s degree, and the professor is paid by the state. When the government hires someone to deliver its course, the government is the speaker. Since the state funds the university, the state gets to choose what is taught. The Supreme Court said exactly that in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, a case the ACLJ argued and won, and the Court has applied it in other decisions about public employees and public universities.

Our brief shows that the Eleventh Circuit brushed these precedents aside. It also treated a state university as if it had constitutional rights against the very state that created it.

This is no modern invention. From the beginning, American governments have built schools and universities to prepare young people for citizenship, and they directed that work themselves. In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance declared that “religion, morality, and knowledge” were “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,” and that schools “shall forever be encouraged.” In 1785, Georgia chartered the nation’s first state university  so young people might be shaped, through instruction, “to the love of Virtue and good Order.” North Carolina’s 1776 constitution called for state universities. Massachusetts, in 1780, charged its legislature to support “the university at Cambridge” and to “inculcate” civic virtue.

Not one of those Founders imagined that an individual teacher held a constitutional right against the people to decide what the state’s classrooms would teach. The tradition runs the other way. The people, through their elected representatives, set the direction of public education.

Even the Eleventh Circuit admitted Florida can keep “conspiracy theories” out of its classrooms. But then it kept for itself the power to decide what counts as one. As Judge Lagoa put it in dissent, that takes the decision “from the elected representatives of the State of Florida” and gives it to the courts. The Supreme Court has long warned judges to use “care and restraint” before interfering in public education.

The people of Florida, through their elected representatives, decided that no student should be taught that their race makes them inherently racist. The ACLJ is asking the Supreme Court to restore that decision.

Take action with us and sign our petition to defeat rogue judges.