A US judge on Thursday blocked key provisions of a Florida law barring professors from advocating certain views in public university classrooms, calling the measure “dystopian”, the latest blow to the Republican-passed measure, Reuters reported.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee said in a 139-page ruling that Florida’s Personal Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Woke Act, would unlawfully require faculty at public universities to self-censor.

His decision comes amid consolidated lawsuits filed by faculty and students challenging the Personal Freedom Act, which Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis championed and signed into law in April.

Critics said it was tantamount to banning Florida teachers from espousing certain concepts of race and gender.

“The First Amendment does not allow the state of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own views, and keep us all in the dark,” Walker wrote.

Walker also said that “instead of fighting ‘woke’ ideas with opposing viewpoints in the ‘marketplace of ideas,’ the state has decided to eliminate some debate.”

Florida lawyers have argued that the state has full authority to limit what public university professors, as public servants, can say in their classrooms.