Decide blocks Texas A&M College’s drag ban
A federal decide on Monday quickly blocked the Texas A&M College System from implementing a ban on drag performances on its campuses.
The Texas A&M Board of Regents handed a decision final month that prohibited drag exhibits in campus venues, arguing on the time, in keeping with courtroom paperwork, that drag exhibits might violate President Donald Trump’s government order prohibiting federal funds from getting used to advertise “gender ideology.”
Because of the decision, Texas A&M’s flagship campus in School Station canceled “Draggieland,” an annual drag efficiency scheduled for Thursday in a campus theater. The Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council, an LGBTQ scholar group that has sponsored the occasion for the previous 5 years, sued, arguing that the ban on drag performances violates the First Modification.
U.S. District Decide Lee H. Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas stated the scholars’ declare is more likely to succeed and issued a short lived injunction that may permit the efficiency to go on as scheduled whereas litigation continues.
“By allowing Draggieland to be held on campus, within the theatre used for all kinds of occasions and performances, for many who need to attend and have purchased tickets to take action, the Board doesn’t suggest that it endorses Draggieland’s message,” Rosenthal wrote in his opinion. “As an alternative, the Board is complying with the constitutional obligation to permit totally different messages and viewpoints, together with these seen as offensive to some, to be expressed at a college that’s dedicated to crucial considered a variety of conflicting and divergent viewpoints and ideologies.”
The Queer Empowerment Council stated in an announcement that it’s “overjoyed” with the choice.
“That is one other show of the resilience of queer pleasure, as that’s an unstoppable drive regardless of those who want to see it destroyed,” the group stated. “Whereas this combat isn’t over, we’re going to respect the enjoyment we get to deliver by placing on the most effective present that we are able to do.”
A spokesperson for the Texas A&M College System stated the college has obtained the decide’s opinion and is reviewing its choices and potential subsequent steps.
The choice is one more blow in opposition to insurance policies that search to limit drag performances. In 2023, a federal decide struck down a Texas regulation that LGBTQ advocates feared would ban drag exhibits, and judges additionally blocked an identical regulation in Montana that focused drag exhibits and occasions the place drag performers learn books to youngsters. Nonetheless, in Tennessee, a federal appeals courtroom final 12 months allowed a regulation limiting drag to face, reversing a decrease courtroom ruling.
Texas A&M’s Board of Regents, along with arguing that permitting drag performances on campus might violate Trump’s order relating to “gender ideology,” additionally stated such performances violate the college’s mission to respect others. Drag, the board stated, includes males dressing in girls’s clothes, carrying exaggerated make-up and prosthetics and performing in a method that “demeans girls.”
The performances might “contribute to a hostile surroundings for ladies opposite to System anti-discrimination coverage and Title IX,” the college stated, citing a federal regulation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education schemes, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.
Rosenthal, nonetheless, stated that the board didn’t present any proof that “Draggieland” has contributed to a rise within the harassment of feminine college students over the past 5 years the Queer Empowerment Council has held the efficiency and that the document didn’t present that any feminine college students had complained.
As well as, Rosenthal stated the board couldn’t present proof that Trump’s government order relating to “gender ideology” applies to pull exhibits “or that the Draggieland message denies the existence of the female and male sexes.”
“The QEC’s grievance makes clear that by donning clothes and make-up historically related to the other intercourse, Draggieland performers intend to convey a message of LGBTQ+ assist by participating in a protected artwork type,” Rosenthal wrote. “The performers are simply that: performers. They’re performing. The efficiency is theater. It isn’t about people looking for to alter their organic intercourse or declare a distinct organic intercourse. It’s about actors who carry out dressed in another way than their organic intercourse. Once more, the Board’s argument conflates the existence of two sexes with other ways to specific sexuality and sexual themes.”
Rosenthal added, “To ban the efficiency from going down on campus as a result of it offends some members of the campus neighborhood is exactly what the First Modification prohibits.”
