Florida has to pay $725,000 after a successful legal challenge to its ‘Stop WOKE’ law

By Jim Saunders ©2024 The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — Florida has agreed to pay $725,000 in legal fees and costs for businesses that successfully challenged part of a 2022 law that Gov. Ron DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act.”

A court filing Tuesday said the state and the plaintiffs reached a settlement Nov. 4 on attorney fees and other legal costs. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker quickly issued an order Tuesday directing the parties to comply with the settlement.

The filings came after attorneys for the businesses filed a motion Sep. 27 seeking $749,642 in fees and $41,144 in additional costs related to the lengthy legal battle.

The underlying lawsuit involved a challenge to part of the law that placed restrictions on addressing race-related issues in workplace training. Walker in 2022 issued a preliminary injunction against the restrictions on free-speech grounds. A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March upheld the preliminary injunction, and Walker followed in July by issuing a permanent injunction.

Walker in August ruled that the plaintiffs were entitled to seek attorney fees, leading to the Sept. 27 motion.

Attorneys from the international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP and the non-profit group Protect Democracy represented the plaintiffs — Primo Tampa, LLC, a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream franchisee; Honeyfund.com, Inc., a Clearwater-based technology company that provides wedding registries; and Chevara Orrin and her company, Collective Concepts, LLC. Orrin and her company provide consulting and training to employers about issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

Tuesday’s filing about the settlement said attorneys for the plaintiffs had provided to the state’s lawyers “all information necessary for the state to issue payment of $725,000.00 divided between Ropes & Gray LLP and Protect Democracy Project as instructed once all required authorizations have been obtained.”

The filing did not provide a more detailed breakdown, but the plaintiffs’ Sept. 27 motion sought $458,676 in legal fees and $32,128 in costs for Ropes & Gray and $290,966 in legal fees and $2,641 in costs for Protect Democracy. It also sought $6,375 in expert fees.

The state was represented in the case by the Washington, D.C.-based firm Cooper & Kirk PLLC and Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office. It was not immediately clear Wednesday how much the state paid to Cooper & Kirk, but the plaintiffs’ Sept. 27 motion cited state data and said Florida paid a “blended rate” of $725 an hour for each Cooper & Kirk lawyer who worked on the case.

The Stop WOKE Act — short for what DeSantis called the “Stop Wrongs To Our Kids and Employees Act” — drew fierce debate in 2022 before being approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Part of the law put restrictions on workplace training, while another part included restrictions for the education system.

The workplace training part listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”

As an example of the concepts, the law targeted compelling employees to believe that an “individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.”

In court documents, the state disputed that the law violated speech rights, saying that it regulated “conduct.” It said businesses could still address the targeted concepts in workplace training — but couldn’t force employees to take part.

But, for example, the appeals court described the law as the “latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct. Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.”

Walker also separately issued a preliminary injunction against the law’s restrictions on the way race-related concepts can be taught in universities. A panel of the appeals court held a hearing in that case in June but has not issued a ruling.