Judge blocks Texas A&M University's drag ban
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Texas A&M University System from enforcing a ban on drag performances on its campuses.
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Texas A&M University System from enforcing a ban on drag performances on its campuses.
The Texas A&M Board of Regents passed a resolution last month that prohibited drag shows in campus venues, arguing at the time, according to court documents, that drag shows could violate President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting federal funds from being used to promote “gender ideology.”
As a result of the resolution, Texas A&M’s flagship campus in College Station canceled “Draggieland,” an annual drag performance scheduled for Thursday in a campus theater. The Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council, an LGBTQ student group that has sponsored the event for the past five years, sued, arguing that the ban on drag performances violates the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas said the students’ claim is likely to succeed and issued a temporary injunction that will allow the performance to go on as scheduled while litigation continues.
“By permitting Draggieland to be held on campus, in the theatre used for a wide variety of events and performances, for those who want to attend and have bought tickets to do so, the Board does not imply that it endorses Draggieland’s message,” Rosenthal wrote in her opinion. “Instead, the Board is complying with the constitutional obligation to allow different messages and viewpoints, including those viewed as offensive to some, to be expressed at a university that is committed to critical thought about a wide range of conflicting and divergent viewpoints and ideologies.”
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