The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied a request by a student group that asked to host a drag show at West Texas A&M University and sought to lift a school ban on the performance.
The Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t finally decide the issue but means Spectrum WT won’t be able to schedule its performance until the matter is resolved in the courts. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case in April.
Spectrum WT called on the court to stop the school’s president, Walter Wendler, from prohibiting the show that he deemed disparaging of women. The student group has argued that the school violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
Spectrum WT in March 2023 sued officials at the university, located in Canyon, Texas, after Mr. Wendler barred the drag show planned for that month, which typically feature men dressed as women.
The group later held the charity event off campus, but it continued to seek an injunction barring Mr. Wendler from prohibiting future events including a planned drag show on March 22. The group is represented by the non-profit free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in an interim ruling last September denied the group’s request for a preliminary injunction, casting doubt on their First Amendment claims because “it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”
The group appealed to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to fast-track the case, scheduling arguments for late April. Spectrum WT responded by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the drag show ban while the case plays out.
Some states including Texas have pursued Republican-backed measures targeting drag shows, with lawmakers arguing that the shows can expose children to deviant sexual imagery and behavior.
In November, the Supreme Court declined to revive a Republican-backed Florida law banning the performance of certain drag shows in the presence of children after the measure was blocked by lower courts.
In their petition to the high court, lawyers for the student group argued that the ban is merely the “president of one small public university in the Texas Panhandle defy what he knows to be the First Amendment’s command” but stressed the issue goes much further.
“Public university and college officials nationwide from across the political spectrum are appointing themselves censors-in-chief, separating what they consider ‘good’ from ‘bad’ expression on their campuses,” they claimed.
“I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity,” he wrote, adding that “James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, prisoners of the culture of their time as are we, declared the Creator’s origin as the foundational fiber in the fabric of our nation as they breathed life into it.”
“Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not,” he added, arguing that such performances “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against” women. “Drag shows are derisive, divisive, and demoralizing,” the school president continued, adding that “such conduct runs counter to the purpose of WT.”
He also disagreed with largely left-wing notions that drag shows are “harmless,” adding: “Not possible. I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it.”
A university campus, charged by the state of Texas to treat each individual fairly, should elevate students based on achievement and capability, performance in a word, without regard to group membership—an implacable and exacting standard based on educational mission and service to all, sanctioned by the legislature, the governor and numerous elected and appointed officials,” Mr. Wendler added.
And Texas officials including state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, told the nine justices the order doesn’t prevent the group from holding a show off the university’s campus.
“They simply may not use the university’s resources to put on a ‘drag show’ that the president has determined could be demeaning to others who must live, work, and learn on the same campus,” the state officials had argued.
