Drag is now illegal in Tennessee thanks to a judge appointed by Donald Trump

Drag is now illegal in Tennessee thanks to a recent ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel at the court ruled that a drag performance group that won an injunction against the law in a lower cour lacked the legal standing to challenge the law in the first place.

Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the first-of-its-kind law in March 2023. The so-called Adult Entertainment Act (AEA) bans “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” from appearing “on public property” or “in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.”

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How Tennessee’s drag performers are planning on beating the state’s draconian drag ban

While celebrities have spoken out against the ban, local queens and kings are playing the long game.

A Memphis-based LGBTQ+ performance group with drag entertainers, Friends of George’s (FOG), filed the suit on March 27, arguing that the law’s language could apply to drag performers “virtually anywhere.” That following April, Judge Thomas Parker — a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump — agreed, saying the “vague and overly broad” law would encourage “discriminatory enforcement” and “clashes with” FOG’s First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.

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Judge Parker issued a permanent injunction against the law, but the state’s Republican officials appealed the decision. However,  the appellate court just overturned Parker’s decision, allowing the law to go into effect, because two members of a three-judge panel said that FOG lacked the legal standing to challenge the law. The judges ruled that FOG didn’t prove that they were likely to be prosecuted under the law because their performances didn’t meet the law’s definition of being “harmful to minors.”

 “FOG’s own evidence demonstrated that their performances possess significant artistic value, which precludes them from being classified as harmful to minors under the statute,” wrote Judge John B. Nalbandian, a Trump appointee. As such, the court didn’t rule on the law’s constitutionality but rather threw out FOG’s case on a technicality.

However, a third judge on the panel, Judge Andre B. Mathis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in his dissent that the AEA violates the First Amendment because it “imposes a content-based restriction on speech that cannot withstand strict scrutiny.” Mathis wrote that the appeals court decision could be cited in future cases against similar laws in other states, further chilling free speech elsewhere.

One of FOG’s attorneys said they were “disappointed” with the appeals court’s ruling and would seek an en banc review from all of the court’s judges rather than just the three-judge panel who ruled against them.

Soon after passing the law, a Tennessee attorney general threatened to prosecute drag performers at a local Pride event. Those performers sued the attorney, and a U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the attorney from following through on his threat.

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