A Bad Omen!

There are bad vibes coming out of the Supreme Court on drag shows! We lost a skirmish and it is not good news coming out of the courts. Notice how they avoided the First Amendment, they conveniently ignored the 1^st Amendment.

Supreme Court allows Texas university to ban charity drag show

The justices rejected an emergency appeal from a LGBTQ student group seeking to put on a drag show on a Texas campus.

Courthouse News Service

By KELSEY REICHMANN

March 15, 2024

The Supreme Court said on Friday that West Texas A&M University does not have to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a charity drag show the school’s Christian president banned. 

Spectrum WT asked the Supreme Court for emergency intervention so its annual drag show could take place on campus. The justices denied the student group’s application without an explanation. There were no noted dissents. 

The student group hosts events for West Texas A&M’s LGBTQ community. One of these events is a drag show raising money for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. 

Last year, Spectrum WT coordinated with university staff as it planned the show. The performance would have been limited to audience members over the age of 13 and would not have featured any risque or lewd conduct. 

Although the group organized the show with university staff, it was abruptly shut down by the university’s president shortly before the event. Walter Wendler said drag shows discriminate against women by stereotyping them. Wendler went so far as to claim that no drag show could ever be a harmless event. 

“Regardless of ‘stated intent,’ such drag shows are ‘derisive, divisive and demoralizing’ to many students on campus,” Lanora Pettit, Texas’ principal deputy solicitor general, wrote. “And just as he would ‘not support ‘blackface’ performances in our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor.’”

So is that going to be their new focus on banning drag shows that it “... discriminate against women by stereotyping them.”?

VOX writes,

The Supreme Court will allow a public Texas university’s unconstitutional ban on drag shows to remain in effect, in a decision announced Friday.

The Court’s decision in Spectrum WT v. Wendler is just one line long and offers no explanation. The decision is also only temporary, but it effectively means that LGBTQ college students in North Texas are not allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights for an indefinite period of time.

This is a story with two very clear villains. One is a university president who banned drag shows on campus, allegedly because he believes that drag is sexist. The other is a notoriously anti-LGBTQ judge.

[…]

Indeed, in its brief to the justices, Spectrum WT has pointed to a federal appeals court decision that held that a fraternity was protected by the First Amendment when it dressed several male students in women’s clothing and held an “ugly woman contest.” One of these men wore actual blackface, dressing as “an offensive caricature of a black woman.”

[…]

The answer is that West Texas A&M is located just outside of Amarillo, Texas. And cases brought in Amarillo’s federal courthouse are all heard by the city’s sole federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk. Kacsmaryk is a Trump appointee with strong ties to the religious right. He’s best known for his stalled attempt to ban the abortion drug mifepristone.

Hopefully the new policy to prevent judge shopping might stop these judges that Trump appointed.

NBC News writes,

JT Morris, a lawyer representing Spectrum WT, said the group will continue to protest the ban, with oral arguments coming up in the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals next month.

“The show is not over,” he said. Morris works for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which backs free expression on college campuses.

[…]

The LGBTQ group says its members’ free speech rights under the Constitution's First Amendment were violated, pointing to a university policy that bars administrators from denying access to facilities based on the political, religious or ideological views.

Notice how the right-wing conservatives conveniently ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t serve their bigoted views?

What I'm concerned about is that the Supreme Court will say that it is a "States Rights" issue and ignore the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

*****

Remember:

"R" is for reverse.

"D" is for forward.

Don't let them take us back to the 1950s