FLORIDA — The Florida Legislature passed House Bill 5601E, which would grant the Board of Governors and Board of Education new authority to directly amend general education course lists rather than only approve or reject them. The bill awaits Governor Ron DeSantis’s signature to become law.

Senate Bill 266, enacted in 2023, required Florida’s statewide education boards to review general education requirements and barred general education courses from including topics that “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent” in U.S. institutions “and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” In early 2024, the Board of Governors removed sociology from the state’s approved core course requirements but allowed universities to keep it in their own institutional offerings. In 2026, the Board of Governors and Board of Education ordered all public institutions to remove sociology entirely from general education course requirements.

State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues defended the changes in March, stating that “sociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy.” He told The Gainesville Sun that the change corrects an oversight from 2023’s Senate Bill 266.

Robert Cassanello, president of the United Faculty of Florida union and an associate history professor at the University of Central Florida, criticized the legislation. He said he thinks “we’re going to see a wholesale amending” of general education courses statewide. He said the bill “represents yet another attack on the part of Florida lawmakers” on the “institutional autonomy of the state public colleges and universities.” He also said he expects “veneration of the founders,” “teaching of patriotic history,” lessons on the “genius of the free markets” and “a lot of the conservative reform language” dubbed “civics.”

Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani, who voted against House Bill 5601E, said in an email that “decisions about academic curriculum belong in the hands of educators, subject matter experts, and institutional leaders, not political appointees.” She added the change “represents another step in a troubling agenda by far-right politicians to erode academic freedom, sideline faculty expertise, and concentrate political control over higher education. Our colleges and universities exist to foster critical thinking, intellectual inquiry, and civic engagement, and those values are weakened when politics dictates what students can learn.”