DeSantis’ culture wars hit a wall in court, but consequences are real in Miami | Opinion

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent a good part of his two terms targeting points of view he dislikes. This week, the ugly impacts of two laws he promoted were on display. Their outcomes may be different, but together they show how extreme Florida’s culture wars have become.

In the first case, a court of appeals on Tuesday upheld a ruling striking down part of DeSantis’ signature law known as the Stop WOKE Act. Passed in 2022 when DeSantis was gearing up to run for president, the law was aimed at rooting out “woke” ideology from public education. The main concern of supporters was “critical race theory” — or CRT — an academic and legal framework that posits that racism is embedded in the legal system and institutions and isn’t just the product of individual prejudice.

The second case highlighted DeSantis’ fight against one of his top political enemies: teacher unions.

A law that DeSantis proclaimed would “provide once and for all for the decertification of partisan teacher unions” came close to doing just that in Miami-Dade County this week. United Teachers of Dade fell slightly short of a new rule that requires at least 50% of eligible employees participate in a union recertification election. UTD got 49.5% participation but survived another year because its recertification election began before the new state law went into effect on July 1, the Herald reported.

That law was the latest effort from the Florida Legislature to impose restrictions on public-sector workers’ unions. The regulations, however, mostly exempt conservative-leaning police and fire unions. No surprises here.

DeSantis and the Legislature were quick to jump on the parental rights movement that surged during the pandemic. They turned parents’ desire to have a bigger say on curriculum and school closures into hostility toward teachers and academic freedom. The Stop WOKE Act and other policies — among them, the infamous “Don’t say gay” bill — were heralded as protection for parents against indoctrination of children by liberal teachers. However, Republicans provided few, if any, examples of indoctrination in public schools.

Stop WOKE prohibited eight concepts from being taught, including that “A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex, bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”

The act was worded vaguely enough to create a chilling effect among teachers and professors who risked losing their jobs if they taught concepts — such as systemic racism — that a student or parent may interpret as making them feel guilty about racism or sexism.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit stopped the law’s enforcement in colleges and universities. It still applies to K-12 but the courts in 2024 also blocked a portion that targeted private employers’ workplace diversity training.

In its most recent ruling, the appellate court’s majority stated the obvious: that the law does not withstand scrutiny under the First Amendment’s protection of speech, which the court wrote “is essential to freedom of thought.”

“The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe not. Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves,” ruling stated.

The court highlighted something that’s been missing from Florida’s culture-war debates surrounding education: that students, exposed to a variety of information inside and outside the classroom, can form their own opinions. Florida’s attempt to handicap teachers and their labor organizations isn’t going to make Florida’s public education better.

When teacher unions are decertified, their contracts with school districts — including salary, benefits and workplace conditions — are dissolved. DeSantis will certainly rejoice if that ever happens to United Teachers of Dade or other unions that have been at odds with him. But that’s not helping students if teachers start leaving their jobs.

As we learned this week, culture wars have real consequences in the classroom and courtroom.