A federal judge temporarily blocked the University System of Texas A&M on Monday to promote the prohibition of drag actions on their campus.
The Texas A&M Board of Texas approved a resolution last month that prohibited drag shows in the places of the campus, arguing at that time, according to judicial documents, that Drag shows could violate the executive order of President Donald Trump that prohibits federal funds from being used to promote the “gender ideology.”
As a result of the resolution, the Texas A&M emblematic campus at the Canceló “Draggieland” University station, an annual drag presentation scheduled for Thursday at a campus theater. The Texas A&M queer empowerment council, a group of LGBTQ students who has sponsored the event during the last five years, demanded, arguing that the prohibition of drag performances violates the first amendment.
The US district judge Lee H. Rosenthal, from the Southern Texas District, said that the students’ claim will probably succeed and issued a temporary court order that will allow the performance to continue as scheduled while the litigation continues.
“By allowing Draggieland to celebrate on the campus, in the theater used for a wide variety of events and performances, for those who wish to attend and have bought tickets to do so, the Board does not imply that it supports Draggieland’s message,” Rosenthal wrote in his opinion. “On the other hand, the Board meets the constitutional obligation to allow different messages and points of view, including those seen as offensive for some, which are expressed in a university committed to critical thinking about a wide range of points of view and conflicting and divergent ideologies.”
Queer Empodement Council said in a statement that he is “delighted” with the decision.
“This is another exhibition of the resistance of the queer joy, since it is an unstoppable force despite those who want to see it destroyed,” the group said. “While this fight is not over, we will appreciate the joy we can bring by organizing the best show we can do.”
A spokesman for the University System of Texas A&M said that the school received the opinion of the judge and is reviewing its options and possible next steps.
The decision is another blow against the policies that seek to restrict drag actions. In 2023, a federal judge attacked a Law of Texas that LGBTQ defenders feared that drag the drag, and the judges also blocked a similar law in Montana that went to the shows and drag events in which the drag artists read books to the children. However, in Tennessee, a Federal Court of Appeals last year allowed a law to restrict foot drag, reviring a ruling from the lower court.
The Texas A&M Board of Regents, in addition to arguing that allowing drag actions on the campus could violate Trump’s order with respect to the “gender ideology,” he also said that such actions violate the mission of the University to respect others. Drag, said the Board, involves men dressed in women’s clothes, with exaggerated makeup and prostheses and acting in a way that “degrades women.”
The actions could “contribute to a hostile environment for women contrary to the anti -discrimination policy of the system and the title IX,” said the university, citing a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in the education programs financed by the federal government, according to judicial documents.
Rosenthal, however, said that the Board showed no evidence that “Draggieland” has contributed to an increase in the harassment of students in the last five years, Queer Empowerment Council has celebrated the performance and that the record did not show that no student had complained.
In addition, Rosenthal said that the Board could not show evidence that Trump’s executive order with respect to “gender ideology” applies to drag programs “or that the Draggieland message denies the existence of the male and female sexes.”
“The QEC complaint makes it clear that by putting clothes and makeup traditionally associated with the opposite sex, Draggieland artists intend to convey an LGBTQ+ support message by participating in a protected art form,” Rosenthal wrote. “Artists are just that: artists. They are acting. Acting is theater. These are not people who seek to change their biological sex or claim a different biological sex. These are actors who perform dresses differently from their biological sex. Again, the argument of the Board combines the existence of two sexes with different ways of expressing sexuality and sexual themes.”
Rosenthal added: “Prohibiting the performance that will take place in the campus because it offends some members of the Campus community is precisely what prohibits the first amendment.”
