Pensacola State College denies it violated a faculty member’s academic freedom and stifled student free expression by forcing the removal or editing of “woke” LGBTQ articles for a student magazine.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has alleged Pensacola State administrators “wildly misinterpreted the Stop WOKE Act by attempting to comply with the law.”
On May 1, the organization, whose primary mission is to “defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought,” sent the college a letter demanding it allow the articles to be published.
“The college’s demand that students not publish the articles in question is a textbook example of a prior restraint, ‘the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on’ freedom of expression. Such restraints present a risk to freedom of speech so great that the ‘chief purpose’ in adopting the First Amendment was to prevent their use, they are valid only in the most extreme circumstances when needed to satisfy compelling government interests,” the letter from FIRE said.
In First Amendment law, prior restraint is government action that prohibits speech or other expression before the speech happens, according to Cornell Law School.
The allegations stem from the college allegedly agreeing to pay for the publication of Just-Opposed, a student arts and culture magazine, but refusing once administrators learned that three articles dealt with LGBTQ lifestyles.
The articles in question were profiles on:
According to FIRE, the administrator argued the articles violated Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which forbids public colleges from funding advocacy “for diversity, equity and inclusion.” FIRE challenged the Stop WOKE Act in court, and in 2024, a judge enjoined the state from enforcing the law.
In a response to FIRE’s letter, Brenda Kelly, PSC’s associate vice president of academic affairs, wrote “Dr. (Marisa) Mills’ students completed the collaborative project without any intervention from me or any other PSC administrator.”
“I had no interactions with Dr. Mills regarding this project until after it was completed, when I was informed about the articles the week before final exams on April 28, 2026. Dr. Mills confirmed that all graded work for the assignment had been submitted before I met her on April 29, 2026, “to discuss the optional, not required, printing of the magazine.” Dr. Mills’ academic freedom was not violated, and students completed the project as assigned.”
Mills, an English and communication associate professor, declined to comment, saying her union representative advised her to not speak publicly on the matter.
However, Casey Hignite, a student in Mills’ class, feels the magazine’s content was censored by the college.
“The ‘Perfect Day Books’ article would have been allowed to remain, but it would have been at the cost of very heavy editing to remove the central themes. The author chose to rescind the story, rather than edit it,” Hignite said, adding they didn’t write any of the articles in question but chose not to submit a piece on Phantasma, a local goth shop.
“At Phantasma’s request, I did not submit it because I was sure they wouldn’t want to take part in censorship,” Hignite said.
The magazine, a collaborative effort between journalism and graphic design classes, was a new project and contained 10 articles. Students also wrote stories about 309 Punk House, Poetry at Craft Bakery, a Pensacola skate park and the city’s music scene.
“This is just the latest in what PSC has done to censor and intimidate its faculty and students. There are issues that are not even being reported on because people are afraid to lose their livelihood,” said Hignite, who is also a writer and political cartoonist for The Corsair, the college’s student newspaper.
“I have heard several times that my political comics cause upset,” Hignite said.
Hignite said the magazine was supposed to be published before the end of the spring semester but has not yet been published. However, they said they are committed to seeing the magazine in print.
“We’re working right now on removing the magazine from under PSC,” Hignite said.
FIRE Student Program Officer Dominic Coletti said from his interpretation, PSC refused to fund the magazine’s publication because of the content.
“We challenged the Stop Woke Act because we were concerned about the possibility that it would be used in exactly this way—to censor student expression,” Coletti said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola State College accused of censoring LGBTQ content in student magazine
Reporting by Mary Lett, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
