The Supreme Court will allow a public Texas university’s unconstitutional ban on drag shows to remain in effect, in a decision announced Friday.
The Court’s decision in Spectrum WT v. Wendler is just one line long and offers no explanation. The decision is also only temporary, but it effectively means that LGBTQ college students in North Texas are not allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights for an indefinite period of time.
This is a story with two very clear villains. One is a university president who banned drag shows on campus, allegedly because he believes that drag is sexist. The other is a notoriously anti-LGBTQ judge.
Spectrum WT is an LGBTQ student organization at West Texas A&M University. It was supposed to hold its annual drag show last March at a campus venue that, according to the organization’s lawyers, hosts concerts, beauty pageants, political events, and other performances hosted by student groups.
Less than two weeks before the drag show was supposed to take place, the university’s president, Walter Wendler, abruptly canceled it and announced that he was banning drag performances from campus.
Wendler’s stated reason for the ban is, to say the least, unusual. He claimed that drag, a kind of theater that satirizes gender norms and often features men dressed in conventionally feminine clothing and makeup, is “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” He also likened it to blackface.
But West Texas A&M is a public university, so Wendler is a government official who is bound by the First Amendment.
Spectrum WT had wanted to hold another drag show this month, but can’t hold it on campus so long as Wendler’s drag ban is in place. Friday’s decision from the Supreme Court is only temporary, and the students have such a strong case under the First Amendment that it is unlikely the drag ban will remain in effect forever.
The case will be heard soon by a federal appeals court, which could still strike down the ban….
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