Texas students ask Supreme Court to block university's drag show ban

Source: The Hill

03/04/24 3:27 PM ET


Students at a west Texas university are asking the Supreme Court to take emergency action to allow them to hold a charity drag performance at their school later this month, claiming that an order barring drag events on campus violates their constitutional rights.

West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler last year canceled a charity drag event organized by members of Spectrum WT, a student-led LGBTQ organization. Wendler in an email to the university community said drag shows are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny, no matter the stated intent.”

“Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not,” Wendler wrote in the March 21, 2023, email, which was also published on his personal blog. His message — which compared drag to blackface and referenced his Christian faith — said the university “will not host a drag show on campus.” “I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it,” Wendler wrote.

West Texas A&M University students in a March 23, 2023, lawsuit alleged Wendler, the school and its governing body had violated students’ First Amendment rights by preventing the event and future drag shows from taking place on campus, calling the move “textbook viewpoint discrimination.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4507334-texas-supreme-court-drag-show-ban/