First Amendment right to a drag show? Texas students ask Supreme Court for emergency ruling:-IN WASHINGTON – Students at a university in the Texas Panhandle have asked the Supreme Court to say that they have the right under the First Amendment to hold a charity drag show on campus. They hope that this emergency request will let them put on the show this month.
Right-wingers have questioned whether efforts to address bias on campus scare away students who want to speak out. This is another side of the heated debate over college speech.
First Amendment right to a drag show? Texas students ask Supreme Court for emergency ruling
Students at West Texas A&M University have been fighting with administrators since the president canceled last year’s planned drag show. This is a challenge from the left.
Wendler, who was president at the time, said that drag shows “stereotype women in cartoonish extremes for the entertainment of others and discriminate against womanhood.”
These days, drag shows are at the center of the culture wars in the United States. Republicans in a number of places have tried to limit drag shows. Last year, a federal judge said that a law in Texas that would limit drag shows in the state is not in line with the Constitution.
In November, Florida asked the Supreme Court to let the state enforce a rule that limited drag shows, but the Court said no.
In a statement that was partly backed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh made it clear that the court was not talking about First Amendment problems. Instead, they were talking about more technical issues with how the lower courts handled the case.
They say that the “judicial safety net broke down” in the Texas case because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans is taking too long to rule on their challenge to the university’s decision and their desire to put that decision on hold while the case is being heard.
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“The president of a small public university in the Texas Panhandle going against what he knows to be the First Amendment’s order would be bad enough on its own.” Their lawyers told the Supreme Court, “But it’s not.” “Political leaders at public universities and colleges across the country are putting themselves in charge of censorship and deciding what is “good” and “bad” speech on their campuses.”
Conservatives don’t like what they call “speech police” policies that try to stop bias on college, like making sexist jokes or calling people names because of their race.
A challenge to Virginia Tech’s “bias-response team” was turned down by the Supreme Court on Monday. That’s because the school had already thrown out the team after being sued.
But Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken the case because it was “a high-stakes issue for our nation’s system of higher education.”
“Until we resolve it, there will be a patchwork of First Amendment rights on college campuses,” they said. “Students in part of the country may pursue challenges to their universities’ policies, while students in other parts have no recourse and are potentially pressured to avoid controversial speech to escape their universities’ scrutiny and condemnation.”
In the Texas case, the Supreme Court told the university that they had until Wednesday to answer the students’ question.
A student group called Spectrum WT wants to hold the drag show to raise money for the Trevor Project, which helps LGBTQ+ youth avoid suicide.
The head of the school, Wendler, said that a drag show could not happen without putting down women.
“I will not seem to agree with putting down one group in order to make rude gestures toward another group for any reason,” he wrote. “Even if the law seems to require it.” It’s a good idea to help The Trevor Project. I think you should skip the show and send the money instead.