“Pro-family” groups that hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would defend a Florida law banning drag shows were disappointed by a decision announced a week before Thanksgiving that leaves the law unenforceable while a legal battle continues over its constitutionality.
The high court’s decision comes nearly six months to the day after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law. The state already had prosecuted some businesses and asked the court to allow the law to remain in force.
Florida is one of more than a dozen states that have introduced anti-drag bills authored and promoted by political nonprofits affiliated with Focus on the Family. The Washington Post reports 26 such bills have been introduced in 14 states.
“Children deserve to have their innocence preserved,” said the Focus-aligned Family Policy Alliance in a May 17 press release thanking DeSantis for “joining the wave of states protecting the innocence of our youngest citizens.”
Focus and its allies use such legislation to give their moral prescriptions the force of law, but courts have ruled against the Alliance’s drag show bills in Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Montana.
The Florida Family Policy Council promoted the bill. The council is one of 40 state groups affiliated with the Alliance, which was born as a division of Focus on the Family in the 1980s and now operates as Focus’ “public policy partner.”
The Florida law doesn’t actually use the words “drag show,” but instead seeks to restrict “sexualized performances,” a term that has been criticized as legally vague. The Alliance’s legislation in other states does refer to “drag shows” or “drag queens.”
An Orlando restaurant sued Florida saying the law was unconstitutional and would hurt business. Hamburger Mary’s offers “family friendly” drag shows on Sunday afternoons that are attended by children accompanied by parents and/or grandparents.
Some legal experts say the Florida legislation is not only unconstitutional but so vague as to be legally unenforceable.
Ironically, a district court judge ruled Florida’s drag show bill conflicts with another Alliance-backed bill signed into law by DeSantis: the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”
Ironically, a district court judge ruled Florida’s drag show bill conflicts with another Alliance-backed bill signed into law by DeSantis: the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”
Focus and its allies support parental rights when it comes to library book bans, removing Critical Race Theory from schools, vaccine mandates, or sex ed in schools. But these groups back legislation that could criminalize parents who choose to take their own children to a drag show. One legal expert said it’s unclear if parents could be charged with a felony for watching the film Mrs. Doubtfire with their families.
U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell said the bill was “specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.” He also said the drag show ban conflicts with a Florida law that permits children to see R-rated movies if they’re accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Other states are facing challenges over their versions of the Family Policy Alliance’s drag show bills.
In August, the Texas drag show law was temporarily blocked by a judge who said it was unconstitutional because it violated First Amendment rights.
In September, a judge in Knoxville, Tenn., prohibited a prosecutor from enforcing the law there, following a similar ruling by a judge in Memphis.
In Arizona, Republican lawmakers claimed the “liberal media” made up the claim that their bill restricted drag shows after the “drag show” language was removed from a later version of the bill.
As BNG reported in May, the Family Policy Alliance is involved in legislation on a host of hot-button issues, including restricting and criminalizing abortion procedures and medications; requiring citizens to register with a state registry to access online pornography; freeing school teachers from having to use personal pronouns of students’ choosing; and limiting student access to classes and textbooks dealing with American history, human sexuality and Critical Race Theory, which Focus says spreads “lies perpetuated by spiritual darkness” and “wokeness.”
Together, the Alliance and its sister organization, the Family Policy Alliance Foundation, have only 18 employees and take in only $4.3 million a year, but they’ve had an outsized influence on America’s anti-transgender landscape through their $40 million, 300-plus employee network of family policy councils in 40 states.
The Supreme Court ruled in response to an emergency request submitted to Justice Clarence Thomas by Florida. The justices said they did not consider the constitutionality of the Florida law.
