U.S. Court Sides With Hamburger Mary’s, Blocks DeSantis’ Unconstitutional Drag Ban

At the end of last week, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction stopping the state of Florida from enforcing a harmful law restricting drag performances. U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell sided with Hamburger Mary’s, an Orlando restaurant and bar that features drag and comedy shows, and plaintiff in the suit, and ruled that that the law banning minors from “obscene live performances” was too broad and stripped citizens of their first amendment constitutional rights to “chilling effect.”

In an email to NBC News, Jeremy Redfern, a spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, reportedly argued that Judge Presnell was “dead wrong” for granting an injunction, saying, “Of course it’s constitutional to prevent the sexualization of children by limiting access to adult live performances.” As if we needed another conservative mouthpiece trotting out the tired, narrow-minded, and just plain false idea that drag is automatically sexual and inherently “obscene.”

Judge Presnell apparently also thinks Redfern’s way of thinking might be suspect, as he explained in his decision that “Florida already has statutes that provide such protection (from obscene performances). Rather, this statute is specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.” Watch out, DeSantis, your office’s bigotry is on major display.

The restrictive law was initially signed by DeSantis in May and is one of several pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation he has supported recently in what appears to be a concentrated movement to delegitimize and erase queerness from his state. In fact, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which recently declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ people and rights in the United States, named Florida as one of the top three most hostile states, along with Texas and Tennessee. 

We are, however, seeing hopeful and positive pushback against these hellish Republican attempts to legislate LGBTQ people out of their rights. Back in the first week of June, a federal judge issued an injunction against another DeSantis-backed law that stopped Florida minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care. And just this past Wednesday, the same judge fully struck down another piece of legislation that banned Medicare from paying for gender-affirming treatments. 

Things look bleak across the U.S. for LGBTQ rights. According to the HRC, the number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced per legislative season has more than quadrupled since 2015. But slowly but surely, seeing the law catch up to these bigoted, anti-constitutional laws can really help things look more cheery.

(featured image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)