A federal judge\u2019s ruling has reset the legal fight over a drag show ban at West Texas A&M, handing the school a win after a full trial and wiping out a pending appeal.<\/p>\n
The case had been on track for a closely watched hearing before the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this week. Instead, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk<\/a> ruled Saturday that the university did not violate the First Amendment by blocking a 2023 drag show by the student group Spectrum WT.<\/p>\n Kacsmaryk, an Amarillo-based judge appointed by President Donald Trump, has drawn national attention for rulings favorable to Republican officials and conservative legal groups in abortion and LGBTQ rights cases.<\/p>\n The now-canceled appeal<\/a> focused on whether Spectrum WT\u2019s drag show should be allowed to proceed while the lawsuit was pending. Once Kacsmaryk issued a final ruling, the appeals court dismissed the appeal.<\/p>\n In his ruling, Kacsmaryk said Spectrum failed to show the planned drag show was intended to convey a specific message and said past performances that included stripteases and simulated sexual activity justified restricting the event in a campus venue open to minors.<\/p>\n He also ruled that Legacy Hall, where Spectrum planned to hold the drag show, is a limited public forum subject to reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limits because the university screens and approves events there.<\/p>\n Kacsmaryk leaned heavily on testimony from Spectrum\u2019s president, who said the group was \u201cnot trying to convey a specific message\u201d in a drag show planned for this year. He rejected Spectrum\u2019s argument that selling tickets to benefit LGBTQ causes and suicide prevention made the performance itself expressive.<\/p>\n The judge also said minors had attended past Spectrum events and that performers had gone beyond what the group said it intended.<\/p>\n \u201cDrag, by its \u2018provocative,\u2019 \u2018transgressive\u2019 nature, veers into sexualized content and Spectrum\u2019s proven inability to control the content elides any argument that the 2026 show will be \u2018appropriate,\u2019\u201d Kacsmaryk wrote.<\/p>\n Spectrum plans to appeal the ruling, said JT Morris, a supervising senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the student group. <\/p>\n Morris said the decision \u201creflects many of the same erroneous legal conclusions\u201d the judge reached earlier in the case and conflicts with Supreme Court precedent on expressive conduct. He also pointed to another judge\u2019s rejection<\/a> of the Texas A&M University System\u2019s separate attempt to ban drag shows based on officials\u2019 views that the performances were offensive or demeaning.<\/p>\n _The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage._<\/p>\n Disclosure: Texas A&M University System and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge\u2019s ruling has reset the legal fight over a drag show ban at West Texas A&M,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[815,289,287,1564,27,29,293,28,16864],"class_list":{"0":"post-131177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-higher-education","10":"tag-politics","11":"tag-state-government","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-legislature","15":"tag-texas-news","16":"tag-west-texas-am-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}