texas a&m banned drag shows to protect women. a judge asked if any women had complained. texas said no.

via The Texas Tribune and Bloomberg Law, both of which covered Wednesday's argument.

One of the reasons the Texas A&M University System gave for banning drag shows from its campus venues was women. The regents' resolution, as the Texas Tribune reports it, said the shows could create a hostile environment for women by mocking or objectifying them.

On Wednesday morning, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit asked the state's lawyer whether any women had complained that the shows objectified or harassed them. According to the Tribune, William "Billy" Cole, the principal deputy solicitor general defending the system, said no. Bloomberg Law, which identified the judge as Dana Douglas, reports his position as "perceived harassment" being enough. Universities, he argued, do not have to wait for a complaint.

what the fifth circuit is deciding

This was the full court, all 17 judges, hearing two cases together. The first began in 2023, when West Texas A&M president Walter Wendler canceled a drag show the student group Spectrum WT planned as a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, and wrote that drag was "derisive, divisive, and demoralizing misogyny," comparing it to blackface, per the Tribune. In January, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk upheld his ban after a trial.

The second is the one with the pageant. In February 2025 the system's regents voted unanimously to ban drag at special-event venues on every campus, and the Queer Empowerment Council, which runs the Draggieland pageant in College Station, sued. Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston temporarily blocked that ban in March 2025. Two trial judges, opposite answers, so here we are.

the questions from the bench

Both sides got it. One judge, the Tribune reports, asked FIRE's J.T. Morris, who represents the students, whether the school would have to host a staged protest depicting the rape of the Statue of Liberty. Another asked whether a public university could ban a blackface show because it found the message offensive. Morris's answer was that a school can regulate conduct but cannot bar a performance because it objects to what it says.

The state had the harder morning. When a judge raised the regents' concern that drag might promote "gender ideology," the Tribune reports, Cole acknowledged that reason on its own could be a viewpoint-discrimination problem. Judge Stephen Higginson, per Bloomberg Law, asked whether any court in 50 years had ruled that a ticketed theater performance was not protected by the First Amendment. Cole said none had.

It is a strange position to defend, in the state that gave the world Alyssa Edwards: that a show in a campus theater is not expression. But nobody should read the tone of a hearing as a result, least of all from this court. No ruling date was set. We have written before about how much Texas politicians enjoy talking about drag queens. This time they had to explain the complaints that never came.