LGBTQ student groups challenge Texas A&M bans on campus drag shows

A pair of LGBTQ student groups asked the full Fifth Circuit to strike down Texas A&M policies barring drag shows at university venues, in cases where two Texas federal judges reached opposite conclusions on the same First Amendment question.

Attorney JT Morris argued the university's own stated reasons for the ban, that drag shows demean women and might jeopardize federal funding under a Trump executive order on ‘gender ideology’, prove the policy targets viewpoint, not conduct. Texas's Billy Cole countered that the ban targets discrimination, not speech, likening it to barring a ‘whites only’ sign.

Judges pressed both sides with hypotheticals ranging from striptease acts to a mock ICE assault on the Statue of Liberty to blackface minstrelsy, with Morris conceding the same viewpoint-neutrality logic he's citing would also protect a blackface performance from a ban.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.