DeSantis Anti-Drag Show Law Struck Down

A federal judge sided with an Orlando restaurant that features weekly “family friendly” drag shows and ordered the state to stop enforcing a new law cracking down on certain “adult live performances.”

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill last month — one of a flurry of legislative proposals backed by GOP governors taking aim at drag events. The Florida law did not specifically mention drag performances, but said the state should revoke the liquor license of any establishment that allows children to attend performances that include lewd exposure to “prosthetic or imitation genitals and breasts.”

DeSantis said the law was designed to “let kids be kids,” but opponents said it was part of a slate of laws aimed at “erasing” the LGBTQ community.  The owners of Hamburger Mary’s Orlando, part of a chain of drag-themed restaurants, sued the state, claiming that the law violated their First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell agreed, writing that the language of the law is vague and “dangerously susceptible to standardless, overbroad enforcement.”  Presnell also said the law clashes with another DeSantis priority — the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” — because it allows the state to decide what performances children can attend, rather than leaving that choice up to parents. He added that existing obscenity laws already protect children from “any constitutionally unprotected obscene exhibitions or shows.” 

Brice Timmons, an attorney who represented Hamburger Mary’s in the lawsuit, said the case was about protecting fundamental rights. “This isn’t about gay people, this isn’t about trans people, this isn’t about drag queens. This is about our basic human freedoms,” he said. “If we don’t stop it here, God help us.”

Timmons also represented an LGBTQ theater company in Tennessee, winning a case earlier this month in federal court over a new law in that state banning drag shows in public or where children could watch them. In that ruling as well, a federal judge ruled the legislation violated First Amendment freedom of speech protections and was “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.”