BREAKING: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, on Tuesday upheld a district court’s preliminary injunction blocking Florida from enforcing its 2022 Stop WOKE Act in the university context.

The majority opinion is from Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee, in which she was joined by Judge Charles Wilson, a Clinton appointee.

“For its part, Florida seeks to evade any First Amendment limitations at all by rigging together several speech doctrines to create a new rule that would quietly remove all free speech protections from the classroom. Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the State’s speech. Emphatically no,” Grant wrote. “The Florida defendants cannot ‘put together half a donkey and half a camel, and then ride to victory on the synthetic hybrid,’” quoting from David Cavers’s 1965 book, The Choice-of-Law Process.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a Trump appointee, dissented.

This opinion is a long time coming. Arguments at the Eleventh Circuit were held in June 2024. The preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Mark Walker, an Obama appointee, in November 2022.

Because of the panel makeup, I would say this is not a likely candidate for en banc review.

First, because of Grant's position, Florida's best likely vote for en banc review would be 6-6, which would fail.

Second, because Wilson is senior status, he wouldn't vote on whether to go en banc but would get to participate if it went en banc (and thus would be another vote against the state).