Federal judge says Florida has turned into Stranger Things ‘upside down’ as he blocks DeSantis-backed ‘Stop WOKE’ Act

A federal judge has partially suspended a Florida law backed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis that restricts classroom instruction and workplace training on race, gender and inequality.

In his ruling on 18 August, US District Judge Mark Waller compared the state to the “upside down” from the Netflix series Stranger Things, accusing Florida lawmakers of trampling First Amendment rights and imposing a “naked viewpoint-based regulation on speech.”

“In the popular television series Stranger Things, the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world,” Judge Waller wrote.

“Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely,” he added.

Judge Waller wrote that “like the heroine in Stranger Things, this Court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down.”

The “Individual Freedom Act” or “Stop WOKE” law is the subject of several lawsuits challenging its constitutionality and alleging racial discrimination to chill classroom and workplace speech.

Honeymoon registry company Honeyfund.com, Ben & Jerry’s franchisee Primo Tampa and workplace diversity consultancy Collective Concepts filed a lawsuit against Governor DeSantis alleging that that the law aims to centre a government-approved narrative of history and render challenging speech illegal, while muzzling private companies and institutions in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Judge Waller argued that the law is “designed to exorcise” opposing viewpoints while allowing the state to “weaponise” the idea of objectivity to “further discredit the prohibited concepts”.

Shalini Goel Agarwal, counsel at Protect Democracy, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they look “forward to proceeding to trial, winning, and seeing this law permanently overturned”.

“It is a direct attack on American free speech values as well as on free enterprise in Florida,” she said.

This is a developing story