A federal judge on Monday ruled that the University of Texas A&M cannot ban drag performances on its campuses following a lawsuit from an LGBT activist group.
U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal said that the decision from the university’s board of regents likely violated the First Amendment and blocked the ban while the case played out in court. The Texas A&M Board of Regents was sued earlier this month by the Queer Empowerment Council which claimed the ban on drag performances in university spaces was unconstitutional.
“The Board, and some members of the A&M community, are offended by the Draggieland performance. To ban the performance from taking place on campus because it offends some members of the campus community is precisely what the First Amendment prohibits,” Rosenthal said.
As part of its justification for the prohibition, the board pointed to an executive order from President Donald Trump that directs federal funding to be cut from entities that promote gender ideology and a directive from Governor Greg Abbott to comply with the order.
The board said that “both the System and the Universities receive significant federal funding, the use of facilities at the Universities for Drag Show Events may be considered promotion of gender ideology in violation of the Executive Order and the Governor’s directive.”
Rosenthal said she was unconvinced by this argument.
“The Board has failed to show that permitting drag shows to occur at Special Event Venues would cause the harassment of female students, much less the type of severe and pervasive harassment that violates Title IX,” the judge wrote. “Nor does the Board point to evidence in the record showing that President Trump’s executive order regarding ‘biological truth’ specifically refers or applies to drag shows, or that the Draggieland message denies the existence of the male and female sexes.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is representing the board of regents, said that taxpayer-funded schools have no obligation to host drag shows.
“Our colleges and universities exist to help students learn and equip them as they take their next steps in life,” Paxton told The Daily Wire earlier this month. “They are not, and have never been, a place for taxpayer-funded drag shows where men pretending to be women engage in obscene, offensive, and degrading behavior.”
The judge’s ruling will mean that the university will be forced to host a drag festival called “Draggieland” on March 27.
