A federal appeals court Tuesday kept in place a district court’s preliminary injunction on Florida’s law banning “woke” instruction at public universities. A 2-1 ruling from the three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Florida’s assertion it could control the speech of its employees, including college professors, to be “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.”

A federal appeals court Monday rejected restrictions that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers placed on addressing race-related issues in workplace training — part of a controversial 2022 law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act.”

A Florida law that restricts the way race-related issues can be taught in schools will stay on hold for universities for now.

Disputing that the measure violates the First Amendment, the state this week urged a federal appeals court to toss out an injunction against a new law that placed restrictions on discriminatory workplace training.