Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today (Tuesday, April 1) filed notice for appeal after federal Judge Lee H. Rosenthal last week blocked Texas A&M University System’ Board of Regents from enforcing its ban drag shows.
“President Trump’s executive order stopping federal funds from being used to promote gender ideology was crystal clear, and the board’s ban on obscene drag shows is in lawful accordance with that order,” Paxton said in a press release from his office this morning.
“The Constitution does not require Texas’ colleges and universities to promote offensive, degrading and lewd behavior on their campuses,” he added. “These filings aim to ensure that our educational institutions are focused solely on promoting academics, not a woke agenda, while this case continues.”
(The Constitution definitely does, however, protect freedom of expression, encompassing speech, press, religion, assembly and petition speech. And despite Trump’s, Paxton’s and many other right-wingers’ apparent belief, a president’s executive order is not law and cannot override federal laws and statutes or, for that matter constitutional rights.)
Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council challenged A&M’s drag ban, and Judge Rosenthal issued the injunction on Monday, March 24, saying that the plaintiffs are likely to win their case on free speech grounds.
Paxton, however, filed his motion before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the judge’s decision should be reversed and the ban left in effect while the case remains ongoing.
Paxton is also waging war against drag in two other cases now on appeal to the Fifth Circuit: Spectrum WT v. Wendler in which a student group at West Texas A&M is challenging that school’s president’s ban on drag shows, and The Woodlands Pride Inc. v. Paxton in which two LGBTQ nonprofit organizations, two drag production and entertainment companies and a drag artist are suing to have SBb 12, passed by the Texas Legislature in 2023 to ban drag in public.
In the second case, Judge David Hittner issued a final order on Sept. 26, 2023, declaring SB 12 to be unconstitutional and permanently blocking the Texas Attorney General and other government defendants from enforcing it. In Spectrum, the trial court refused to issue a ruling on the plaintiffs’ First Amendment decision and refused to enjoin the drag ban issued by West Texas A&M’s president. The Fifth Circuit has heard oral arguments but has yet to rule.
— Tammye Nash