The first motion hearing in the federal case Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council v. Williams Mahomes et al. took place in Houston Tuesday morning. The case, which was ignited last month after a Board of Regents resolution banned drag shows across the A&M System, will have an opinion released before March 26 by Judge Lee Rosenthal.
Draggieland, the banned show in question, is an annual competition between local drag queens that features singing, dancing and talent shows.
Beginning at 9 a.m. in the Southern District of Texas, the counsel for the Queer Empowerment Council, or QEC, spoke first.
J.T. Morris and Adam Steinbaugh from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, began representing QEC on March 5 and have represented other student groups who have been banned from hosting drag shows on campus in the past.
“It’s called Draggieland,” Steinbaugh told the court. “These are students who are conveying to a very conservative campus community that there are LGBTQ members of this community, and there’s a space for them in this community.”
Judge Rosenthal referenced a copy of the College Station campus’ student speech code, which has a beginning amendment that states, “The university will protect the rights of freedom of speech, expression, petition, and peaceful assembly as set forth in the U.S. Constitution and Texas state law. Texas A&M University maintains its right to regulate reasonable time, place and manner restrictions concerning acts of expression and dissent.”
“I think there’s a lot of speech out there that people just don’t like,” Steinbaugh said. “Human instinct is to try and suppress the speech that we find abhorrent …. A lot of people have their own individual lines that they think that speech should not cross, but it’s not the government that gets to draw those lines.”
Zachary Berg from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, who serves as counsel for the defendants Board of Regents and President Mark A. Welsh III, said they believe that the A&M rules on expressive activity on campus don’t allow for a drag show in Rudder Theater. Berg was joined by Marc Csoros in court for counsel, and Ryan Kercher is also listed as counsel.
“The restriction on the drag shows is purely on conduct,” Berg said. “The Board laid out a five-factor test in the resolution that has only to do with conduct. You don’t need to know anything about viewpoint, know anything about how they feel about gender expression even. You can judge it purely based on conduct.”
The five-point test is stated in the resolution and states that banned drag shows are those “that involve biological males dressing in women’s clothing, wearing exaggerated female make up and/or exaggerated prosthetics meant to parody the female body type, and that are: open to the public; involve sexualized, vulgar or lewd conduct; and involve conduct that demeans women.”
Throughout the hearing, Rosenthal referenced multiple cases that decided drag shows were considered free speech, including The Woodlands Pride, Inc v. Paxton, a 2022 court case that declared Texas’s “Drag Ban” bill unconstitutional.
“The question is whether a reasonable person would interpret it as some kind of message,” Rosenthal said. “That’s out of the Supreme Court. And in the Woodlands Pride case, my esteemed and very experienced colleagues found that drag performances were expressive.”
The plaintiffs were seeking an temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, which would allow for Draggieland to proceed on campus as scheduled. No immediate opinions were given during the hearing. Rosenthal’s decision will be released before March 26, a day before the performances’ originally scheduled day, March 27.
Computer engineering senior Alex Gonce serves as the events chair and treasurer for QEC and was present at the motion hearing.
“I am hopeful,” Gonce said. “Based on how the judge was asking questions, I am hopeful. But the timeline and everything still very much matters to us.”
