Supreme Court rejects students' request to hold drag show while they challenge school's ban

WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency request from students at West Texas A&M University that they be allowed to put on a charity drag show while they challenge the Texas Panhandle school's ban.

The school's president cancelled last year's show as part, he said, of his responsibility to "foster a healthy campus culture and effective educational environment."

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

While the students are litigating that decision, they asked the court to rule that they could hold this year's planned show.

The justices denied the request without comment.

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.

Two sides to debate over campus speech

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.

But the case is also 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, the Texas students argued 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.”

The university agreed that the case may raise important First Amendment questions. But the issue is not of such immediate national importance that the court needs to weigh in now, the school told the court.

Another free speech case Supreme Court defines when public officials may block critics on personal social media accounts

Are drag shows `denigrating and demeaning' to women?

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.”

An attorney for the students said the Supreme Court's decision is disappointing but the fight will continue when the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral arguments in the challenge next month.

"The show is not over," said JT Morris, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court stays out of Texas school fight over drag show, First Amendment