A local district attorney has notified Pride organizers that he wants to enforce the new legislation even though a federal judge has ruled the restriction is unconstitutional, putting Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law restricting drag displays under further legal scrutiny.
A group organizing a Blount County Pride festival for September 2 was represented in court by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which filed the case late on Wednesday. Flamy Grant, a drag performer who was booked to appear at the event, is also being defended by the ACLU. In eastern Tennessee, a federal court is being asked by the plaintiffs to invalidate the statute and stop it from being put into effect.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Memphis declared that Tennessee’s purported anti-drag show legislation was “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad,” and that it encouraged “discriminatory enforcement.” The court’s declaration that the verdict solely extended to Shelby County, where Memphis is located, rapidly raised doubts despite the celebration of the ruling by LGBTQ activists.
Legal experts have proposed that district attorneys throughout the state wouldn’t enforce a law that a federal judge ruled violated the First Amendment, but others, like state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, have been quick to point out that the law was still in force outside of Shelby County.
A rural county, about 395 miles east of Memphis, is the source of the present unrest when District Attorney Ryan Desmond wrote to Blount County Pride organizers last week to say he intended to enforce the state’s anti-drag legislation.
Desmond stated that it is “certainly possible” that the incident in question won’t break any laws. “However,” it says, “if sufficient evidence can be provided to this office that the cited criminal statutes have been broken, our office will prosecute these cases in the interest of justice in a moral and just manner.”
The county mayor, the Pride organizers, law enforcement agencies, and other public servants were all named in the letter.
According to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Desmond’s letter was “a naked attempt to chill” free speech.
The lawsuit claims that Defendant Desmond could have made a public announcement if he had only wanted to inform the public that he intended to enforce the anti-drag law. Instead, he addressed a letter to Blount Pride and the booked drag performers.
Office of Desmond declined to comment on the case. On Thursday morning, a request for comment was made through email to the attorney general’s office spokeswoman, who is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.
“Threatening to put into effect this unconstitutional law amounts to a destructive attempt to exclude LGBTQ people from the public eye, which is simply unacceptable,” Stella Yarbrough, legal director of ACLU Tennessee, said in a statement. Drag performances are First Amendment-protected expression regardless of where they are done in the state, the court has made this very clear.
The Republican-dominated General Assembly in conservative Tennessee has been focusing more and more on drag shows and LGBTQ rights.
The anti-drag show bill was passed in March by the GOP-controlled legislature with the support of Republican Governor Bill Lee. Many proponents said that it was important to ban drag performances from occurring in public or places where children could witness them because of local drag performances.
The phrase “drag” is noticeably absent from the new law. The definition of adult cabaret in Tennessee was altered by the act to “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” Impersonators of either sex are currently categorized as adult cabaret acts along with strippers and topless, go-go, or exotic dancers.
Adult cabaret performances were prohibited on public property and anywhere else where minors might be present. If a performer violates the law again, they could face felony or misdemeanor charges.
After that, Lee said he would defer to the attorney general and would not comment on whether the district attorneys should continue to enforce the legislation.