Appeals court upholds Texas drag show ban law

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld Texas's law banning “sexually oriented” drag shows on public property.

The decision appeared to be based on the argument that the 2023 law, S.B. 12, won’t be enforced against drag acts unless they include overtly sexual components, POLITICO reported.

Two of the judges who ruled in favor of the law, Trump appointee Kurt Engelhardt and George W. Bush appointee Leslie Southwick, lifted a lower court order that had blocked it for violating the First Amendment.

Engelhardt and Southwick said last year's Supreme Court decision last year on state social media regulation laws made it so the lower court order should be withdrawn and reconsidered.

The two judges also said that because some drag performers and venues bringing the lawsuit claimed they avoided sexually explicit content, they were unlikely to be prosecuted and lacked standing.

A third judge who partially dissented from the ruling, Clinton appointee James Dennis, said his colleagues were ignoring the legislature's intent to prohibit drag performances in public and in private spaces where children are present.

He agreed with his fellow judges that the lower court should revisit the legal issues in the case in light of the Supreme Court’s social-media decision, but that he would have left the injunction against the Texas law in place while that review takes place.