Federal Judge Bars Texas A&M From Canceling Drag Show

A federal judge has upheld the First Amendment rights of a student group at Texas A&M who planned an upcoming drag show on the College Station campus. In February, the school’s Board of Regents voted to prohibit drag performances across all 11 campuses, calling drag “offensive” and “inconsistent with” the “core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others.” Via press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE):

In her ruling, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas held that a student organization, the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council, was likely to succeed in showing the drag ban violated the First Amendment.

The court held that drag is theatrical expression protected by the First Amendment and that the university’s justifications for prohibiting the student-funded, student-organized “Draggieland” performance fell short. “Draggieland” will now take place as planned on Thursday evening.

Every year since 2020, students at Texas A&M University-College Station have held “Draggieland” (a combination of “Drag” and “Aggieland”) on campus.

But in February, citing a recent executive order issued by President Donald Trump on “gender ideology,” the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents abruptly voted to ban drag performances across all 11 campuses, claiming drag was “offensive” and “inconsistent with” the “core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others.”

That vote canceled Draggieland’s March 27 performance, which the Queer Empowerment Council plans and hosts in a campus theatre open to all student groups.

But the regents’ edict clearly violated the First Amendment, which does not allow public university officials to censor student performances based on nothing more than their personal dislike of its content or perceived ideology.

FIRE sued on the Queer Empowerment Council’s behalf earlier this month seeking to have the ban overturned on First Amendment grounds, and filed a motion for an injunction that would allow the show to go on while the case made its way through the courts.