A federal judge who routinely sides with conservative activists has upheld West Texas A&M University’s ban on drag performances on campus, ignoring longstanding precedent and rejecting First Amendment arguments for why the ban should be overturned.
West Texas A&M University imposed the ban in 2023 when University President Walter Wendler prohibited Spectrum WT, the university’s LGBTQ student organization, from hosting a campus drag show to raise money for The Trevor Project, the nation’s leading LGBTQ suicide prevention organization.
Wendler blocked the show on the grounds that drag was “misogynistic” and mocked women, likening the art form to blackface. She also argued that there is no such thing as a “harmless drag show” and that performers adopt exaggerated gender expressions through makeup, clothing and prosthetics that stereotype and demean women.
“Supporting The Trevor Project is a good idea,” he wrote in a campus-wide email. “My recommendation is to skip the show and send the fabric.”
With assistance from the Foundation for Individual Rights Expression (FIRE), Spectrum WT filed a federal lawsuit. The group argued that the ban violated its First Amendment rights and sought an injunction to allow the performances to continue.
In September 2023, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmalik of the Northern District of Texas denied the preliminary injunction and allowed the ban to go into effect. That decision was later reversed by a divided three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the ban violated students’ free speech rights and temporarily blocked it.
The full ideologically conservative Fifth Circuit ruled in October that the commission’s decision was invalidated. big bank Rehearsing. This clears the way for Mr. Kaczmarik to proceed with the case, including seeking a permanent injunction and nominal damages.
In a 46-page judgment, Mr. Kaczmalik denied Spectrum WT’s request for a permanent injunction and allowed the ban to remain in place. He likened drugs to “blackface” and wrote that both “mocking vulnerable people by satirizing aspects of their identity.”
“The only difference is that one performance is ‘hated by the cultural elite,’ while the other is fashionable — at least for now,” he wrote.
Kaczmalik also argued that drugs are not First Amendment-protected speech because they have “no message.” He added that even if Spectrum WT “intended to convey a message that perverts gender norms, this court cannot find that it was likely that the message would be understood by viewers.”
writing to her Erin in the morning substacktransgender journalist Erin Reid said Kaczmalik’s sentence, which likened drugs to blackface, was “particularly egregious.”
“Blackface was created by white performers to dehumanize marginalized groups and reinforce racial oppression,” Reed wrote. “Drag, by contrast, was born out of marginalized communities themselves, as a form of self-expression, community-building, and survival. It has existed across cultures and centuries, from Shakespearean plays to Harlem ballroom culture to modern performance.”
“Drag, in its modern form, conveys meanings about gender identity and expression, intentionally subverts sexist expectations of dress and performance, and places it squarely within the scope of activities protected by the First Amendment.”
Reed also pointed out that this is not the first time Kaksmarik, a former deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, has issued controversial rulings targeting LGBTQ people. His recent record includes several rulings blocking the Biden administration’s nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals in health care, education, and the workplace.
Kachmalik’s ruling on drug prohibition is inconsistent with recent rulings elsewhere. In May, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Florida law prohibiting drug acts involving minors was “overbroad” and “impermissibly vague” and likely unconstitutional. Similarly, a federal judge blocked Montana from enforcing its drug ban in 2023, concluding that the law restricts speech based on content or identity without proving that the drugs rise to the level of obscenity.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
