From Southern Utah Drag Stars v. City of St. George, decided Friday by Judge David Nuffer (D. Utah.); seems generally correct to me:
Public spaces are public spaces. Public spaces are not private spaces. Public spaces are not majority spaces. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that all citizens, popular or not, majority or minority, conventional or unconventional, have access to public spaces for public expression….
Plaintiffs Southern Utah Drag Stars, LLC ("Drag Stars") and Mitski Avalōx ("Avalōx") seek their opportunity to speak in the public square through a community drag show which they say conveys messages of diversity, inclusion, and support for individuals with non-traditional gender expression and identities. Drag Stars applied for a special event permit (the "Permit") to hold "Our Allies & Community Drag Show" ("Allies Drag Show") at a public park in St. George, Utah (the "City").
The City denied the Permit based on never-previously-enforced ordinances that prohibit special event advertising until a final event permit is issued. The record shows the use of this prohibition was a pretext for discrimination.
The City also enacted a moratorium barring all new special event permit applications for six months. At the same time the City's two-step blocked Drag Stars from holding the Allies Drag Show for at least six months, the City retroactively exempted the majority of other known violators of the advertising prohibition and exempted major swaths of events from the moratorium….
The court's opinion is long (60 pages) and detailed, so let me focus on the brief section on why the drag show is constitutionally protected speech, and then provide the court's summary of the other matters:
