Florida Students May SUE Ron DeSantis For Blocking AP African American Studies Class

High school students in Florida are threatening to sue Governor Ron DeSantis for blocking an AP African American Studies class for frivolous, and likely fake, reasons. Led by famed civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, the students have a real chance to make a difference in the state if they decide to file the lawsuit. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains how there's a loophole that could mean a victory if a suit goes forward from these students.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A group of high school students here in the state of Florida, um, along with legendary civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump, are now letting Ron DeSantis know that they are prepared to sue him over his decision to block an AP African-American Studies course in Florida public schools. Now, I told this story last week. Of course, DeSantis came along. There's this ap, uh, uh, African American studies course that the college board in the state of Florida, and that's pivotal by the way, the college board approved this advanced placement class. They had to submit it to Ron DeSantis is administration because that's his new anti C R T law. They came back and said, Nope, this violates our anti C R T law. You can't teach it. Get this thing outta here. And it took them almost a week before they finally came out and said, the reason we're we're blocking this is because, uh, it of course included topics of intersectionality, black studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, uh, black feminist literary thought, uh, the reparations movement and the black study in black struggle in the 21st century.

Yeah. In other words, African American history. So they kind of let 'em know that, yeah, you talk about black people too much in your African American studies course. So now, uh, uh, crump along with these three students has of course sent notice as they say to Ron DeSantis, that if you continue blocking this, we are going to sue you. Now, the college board is actually reworking the course to try to comply with the DeSantis administration's demands, uh, which is probably a bad move. You shouldn't do that. They're never going to approve this. But here's the thing, and this is why I think if these students file suit, they could actually be successful. And Crump, as I said, is a legendary civil rights lawyer. He is brilliant. He is phenomenal. If anybody can win this case, it's him. And here's why. When DeSantis passed his anti c r T law, it applied not just to public schools here in the state of Florida, but also to colleges. It was then challenged in court when it was challenged in court. The judge upheld, or the courts upheld, uh, the part for public schools, but exempted colleges. Colleges do not have to abide by it. They can teach it. This course was created by the college board that under that previous ruling, would have exemption from the anti C R T law. Now, you still run into problems because it is technically taught in public schools, by public school employees who are paid by the state. But that little loophole there saying, the colleges

Are exempt from this, and this is a college board class that is an elective, that's your window of opportunity. And a, a skilled lawyer like Trump, he can absolutely use that to his advantage to pull off a victory here. So that's what we're looking at. I hope they file the suit. I think they have a very strong chance of winning and DeSantis needs to be put in his place for his bigoted policies down here in the state of Florida, because at the end of the day, that's what this is all about. This is bigotry that DeSantis has turned into legislation.