The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida permanently blocked a provision of Florida's Individual Freedom Act (IFA) on July 26. The act banned certain workplace training concerning race, sex and discrimination. The permanent injunction follows the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the act violated the First Amendment and removes the act's restrictions on employee training programs.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed the IFA into law on April 22, 2022. The law drew significant attention from Florida employers as it made illegal mandatory training programs that promote eight specific concepts. These concepts included beliefs that any race or sex is morally superior to another, that individuals are inherently racist or sexist based on their race or sex (whether consciously or unconsciously), and that race or sex determines whether someone is privileged or oppressed.
Following passage of the IFA, two businesses and a diversity consultant sued the state of Florida to invalidate the law. The court temporarily halted the mandatory workplace training regulations prescribed by the IFA, noting that the law violated the Constitution and infringed on First Amendment free speech protections. The court explained that the IFA improperly "sweeps up an enormous amount of protected speech to ban a sliver of offensive conduct that exists somewhere between the trainings plaintiffs wish to hold and what the [Florida Civil Rights Act] already bars."
The state appealed and argued that the law permissibly regulates conduct, not speech, thereby alleviating any First Amendment concerns. The state contended that while businesses could still discuss the eight concepts enumerated in the IFA, they could not force workers to attend trainings advancing these concepts.
On March 4, 2024, a unanimous three-judge panel for the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the state. It held that the state could not recharacterize or reframe the IFA as a permissible conduct regulation because, at its heart, the law barred employers from holding training programs on particular speech that the state disfavored. The Eleventh Circuit upheld the preliminary injunction issued by the district court and stated that:
"No matter how hard Florida tries to get around it, viewpoint discrimination is inherent in the design and structure of this Act. Given our profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, the answer is clear: Florida's law exceeds the bounds of the First Amendment. No matter how controversial the ideas, allowing the government to set the terms of the debate is poison, not antidote."
On July 26, the district court converted the preliminary injunction of the IFA into a permanent one, completely invalidating the IFA's training restrictions. The state did not oppose the permanent injunction, which should put this matter to rest. The permanent injunction means that employers are not required to modify their training content to comply with the IFA. Companies can continue developing and administering comprehensive discrimination and harassment training programs that meet current state and federal laws.
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