Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaks during a roundtable event in March in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the De-Santis-championed Stop WOKE Act violates free speech. File Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo

July 7 (UPI) — A federal panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday that the Stop WOKE Act championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the free speech of professors and is a “breathtaking assertion of power.”

The Florida law restricted how professors can teach, especially when speaking about gender and race, in colleges and universities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled 2-1 to support a 2022 decision that called the law “positively dystopian,” Politico reported.

The court Tuesday went further, saying the act is 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 — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” the ruling said.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote the opinion, joined by Judge Charles R. Wilson. Judge Barbara Lagoa, however, wrote a dissent saying the First Amendment “does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.”

The Florida Legislature approved the act, also called the Individual Freedom Act, in 2022. The state has been fighting it in court ever since.

The lawsuits that led to the ruling Tuesday were brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a student free-speech group, and the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida and Legal Defense Fund.

FIRE senior attorney Greg Greubel said the decision “means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics — even if politicians disagree with them.”

DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday, Politico said. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier praised Lagoa on social media, saying she “may be the best jurist in our country” and should be on the U.S. Supreme Court.