Pants-of-dog wrote:https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23310524/doc-044-order-granting-mot-for-prelim-inj.pdf
The link is available in the article I previously linked to citing both the teachers who were censored and the judge who found in their favour.
Thank you. Judging by the state's arguments and also the regulations as cited in the ruling, you are right that Florida intends to apply an unacceptably broad interpretation of the law. I think it's clear it should be narrowly interpreted as only referring to grading in compulsory coursework or training, but as things stand now (and this was rather stupidly argued by the defendants) the state intends to apply the law broadly and goes far beyond than what the law itself allows in doing so. The defendants, in particular, interpret the law as banning any sort of expression of support for the CRT concepts mentioned in the law, even when they are part of elective coursework (so students who don't want to be exposed to the topic can simply not take the course and get their degree anyway), when they're meant to be contrasted with counterarguments (so they are not even a form of speech by the lecturer) and students are not expected to take a specific side when examined. This would most certainly go against the saving provisions that are meant to protect in-class discussion of the concepts, in fact, they render those useless in practice.
If the state will continue interpreting the law that way, I'm fairly certain it will be thrown out. If I were De Santis, I'd rewrite the regulations that implement it so it conforms to what any reasonable understanding of the first amendment says. I think that, in practice, this would keep the text of the law as is while preserving the right of professors to express their personal opinion on those matters and the right students have of receiving all the relevant information when learning about controversial topics.
- By ingliz
- By wat0n
- By paeng
- By Potemkin