A short excerpt from today's long decision by Judge Lee Rosenthal (S.D. Tex.) in Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council v. Mahomes:
The Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council ("QEC"), a student organization at A&M's College Station flagship campus has, for each of the last five years, sponsored a drag show cleverly named "Draggieland" on campus. It is a ticketed event; only those who want to attend do so. Anyone who finds the performance or performers offensive has a simple remedy: don't go. This year, the performance was scheduled for March 27, 2025. But on February 28, after tickets were sold, the A&M Board of Regents banned the show from its "Special Event Venues" [which are otherwise generally open to student groups -EV]. No one can go to the scheduled March 27 performance at the on-campus venue that was reserved in advance, even those who want to attend.
The court noted (among other things) that, when a university opens up venues to student groups, it can't then impose viewpoint-based limits on the groups' speech (see, e.g., Rosenberger v. Rector (1995), among many other cases); and the court concluded that this exclusion was viewpoint-based, because the premise of the exclusion was that drag shows are "demeaning" to women:
