It Keeps Getting Piled Higher and Deeper!

Down in Texas they they just love to pile it higher and deeper! This time it is the drag queens they are going after... it seems like the Texas courts never heard of the First Amendment! The courts in other case have upheld that dance is included under the 1^st Amendment.

Texas’ drag show ban takes effect after years of court challenges

KBTX Ch 3

By Alex Nguyen and Ayden Runnels

Published: Mar. 20, 2026

A 2023 law that restricts some public drag shows went into effect on Wednesday after a federal appeals court reaffirmed it in a February ruling. 

Senate Bill 12 prohibits drag performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics on public property or in front of children. Business owners who violate the law are fined $10,000 for hosting such events while performers could be hit with a Class A misdemeanor. 

In September 2023, U.S. District Judge David Hittner declared the law unconstitutional, saying that it “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment” and that it is “not unreasonable” to think it could affect activities like live theater or dancing. More than two years later in November, a three-judge panel in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unblocked the law and returned the case to the district court. 

So the court shot them down in the appeal, basically saying the same thing but avoided the part the higher disliked. But here is the thing,

As part of the ruling, the panel found that most of the plaintiffs — a drag performer, a drag production company and pride groups — failed to show that they intended to conduct a “sexually oriented performance,” and therefore, could not be harmed by the law. The ruling suggests that the federal judges don’t believe all drag shows are sexually explicit.

So what the court said in a round about way, that the law doesn't bar drag shows, only sexually explicit shows! However here is the kicker... who decides if it is sexually explicit?

Critics of the ban have previously raised concerns that Republican lawmakers were portraying all drag performances as inherently sexual or obscene.

The "devil is in the details"