First Amendment right to drag show? Texas students ask Supreme Court for emergency ruling

WASHINGTON – Students at a university in the Texas Panhandle have asked the Supreme Court to rule that they have a First Amendment right to hold a charity drag show on campus, an emergency request they hope will allow them to put on the show this month.

It’s another side of the roiling debate over campus speech that has included challenges from the right about whether efforts to confront bias on campus intimidate students who want to speak their mind.

In this challenge from the left, students have been fighting with officials at West Texas A&M University since the school's president canceled last year’s planned drag show.

President Walter Wendler has said drag shows “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood.”

Drag shows have joined the front line of America’s culture wars in recent years. Republican lawmakers in multiple states have tried to restrict drag shows. A federal judge last year said a Texas law seeking to limit drag performances in the state is unconstitutional.

In November, the Supreme Court denied a request by Florida officials to let the state enforce a law restricting drag shows.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a statement partly joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, stressed that the court was not dealing with the First Amendment questions but rather the more procedural issues of how the lower courts handled that case.

In the Texas case, the students argue that the “judicial safety net broke down” because the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is moving too slowly on their challenge to the university’s decision and on a request to put that decision on hold while it’s being litigated.

“This would be bad enough if the problem were confined to having the president of one small public university in the Texas Panhandle defy what he knows to be the First Amendment’s command. But it isn’t,” the students’ lawyers told the Supreme Court. “Public university and college officials nationwide from across the political spectrum are appointing themselves censors-in-chief, separating what they consider `good’ from `bad’ expression on their campuses.”

Conservatives have complained about what they call “speech police” policies aimed at confronting bias on campus, including sexist jokes or racist name-calling.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal challenging a "bias-response team" at Virginia Tech.  But that was because the school had already disbanded the team after it was sued.

Still, justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken the case to address "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 wrote. "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 has asked the university to respond to the students’ request by Wednesday.

Spectrum WT, a student organization, wants to hold the drag show to raise money for the Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ young people.

Wendler, the school’s president, said it is not possible to put on a drag show without denigrating and demeaning women.

“I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it,” he wrote. “Supporting The Trevor Project is a good idea. My recommendation is to skip the show and send the dough.”

More: A drag show, a protest and a line of guns: How the battle over one issue is tearing at America

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Drag show at West Texas A&M University comes before Supreme Court