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Federal Judge Overturns Tennessee Ban on Drag Shows

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Late Friday, June 2, a federal judge overturned a new Tennessee law prohibiting drag performances in public spaces, ruling it unconstitutional, according to a news article published in www.tennesseeoutlook.com and written by Holly McCall.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker ruled the Adult Entertainment Act (AEA) violates the separation-of-powers principle and chills speech protected through the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Parker was nominated by President Donald Trump nominated Parker to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee,

In March, Friends of George’s, a Memphis theater company that raises funds for LGBTQ groups through performances that include drag, challenged the law, which was originally set to take effect on April 1. Parker placed a stay on the law the day before it was set to be enacted while considering arguments.

In his Friday ruling, Parker wrote that while the state has an interest in protecting minors, the law is not geared to do that. “Instead, that (the legislature’s) predominant concerns involved the suppression of unpopular views of those who wish to impersonate a gender that is different from the one with which they were born.”

Parker noted the law is overly broad and could apply to almost any public space, while adding that lawyers for the State of Tennessee altered the meaning of the AEA from constricting entertainment deemed “harmful to minors” to entertainment damaging to “a reasonable 17-year old.”

Parker’s ruling noted the state’s existing obscenity laws “can punish most, and possibly all, of the conduct the AEA seeks to regulate.”