A federal judge handed down a ruling in a contentious case over drag shows at West Texas A&M University this weekend. U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk found that the university can ban drag shows on its campus in a 46-page finding of fact that focused on minors potentially viewing sexual content at such shows.
The judge’s ruling also used the word blackface 10 times.
Why would a judge’s ruling on drag shows feature the term? Because conservatives have revived comparisons between drag performances and minstrel shows of the 19th century, where white performers would paint their faces black and perform negative stereotypes of enslaved Africans.
In a 2023 email canceling a charity drag show by Spectrum, an organization for LGBTQIA+ students and allies, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler said that drag shows were demeaning to women, and likened them to blackface. The email was titled “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing,” according to ABC 7 Amarillo.
“As a performance exaggerating aspects of womanhood (sexuality, femininity, gender), drag shows stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood,” Wendler wrote. “As a university president, I would not support ‘blackface’ performances on our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor.”
The student leaders of Spectrum, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, sued Wendler, claiming that their First Amendment rights were violated.
The drag show had been intended to raise money for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth. Spectrum ended up hosting that year’s drag show off-campus, thanks to GoFundMe donations, according to ABC 7 Amarillo.
In his Saturday ruling, Kacsymaryck took it a step further by using the comparison as justification to uphold the ban and deny that drag performances meet the legal definition of free speech. The judge used Wendler’s comparisons between drag shows and blackface performances as an example of Wendler’s “viewpoint neutrality” on events he would not allow on campus.
“Drag exaggerates women’s breasts, buttocks, and other physical attributes, while blackface emphasizes African Americans’ skin color and offensive cultural stereotypes,” Kacsymaryck wrote. “But the purpose is the same: to reduce an entire group to merely its sexuality (in the case of drag) or skin color (in the case of blackface). The only difference is that one performance is ‘abhorred by cultural elites’ while the other is in vogue—at least for now.”
Kacsymaryck reasoned that to restrict events in a limited public forum, as the intended venue of the drag show (West Texas A&M’s Legacy Hall) is considered, Wendler’s decisions need to be viewpoint neutral and reasonable in light of the venue’s purpose. Kacsymaryck wrote that Wendler did not violate the First Amendment because he did not intend to suppress the viewpoint of Spectrum, but rather disagreed with their method of expressing their viewpoints.
According to Kacsymaryck’s ruling, Wendler’s reasoning to cancel the drag performance could be equally applied to a decision to cancel “a blackface performance, a white-supremacist rally, a cisgendered striptease, or an antisemitic “Shylock” skit mocking Jews.”
“In fact, President Wendler testified he may do exactly that: cancel a blackface or similar antisemitic performance,” Kacsymaryck wrote.
Kacsymaryk, dubbed “one of Texas’ most notoriously conservative federal judges” by the Texas Tribune, was appointed by President Donald Trump as judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in 2019. He’s gained recognition for rulings requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, and invalidating the FDA’s approval of abortion pill mifepristone.
Before he was appointed a judge, Kacsymaryk practiced at a right-wing, “religious liberty” oriented law firm, according to Texas Monthly. In previous writings, Kacsymaryk has called homosexuality “disordered” and signed a 2016 letter that claimed being transgender was a “delusion.”
It may be no surprise, then, that amid such right-wing circles that Kacsymaryk emerged from, the comparison between blackface and drag is not a new talking point. In 2015, Mary Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, made similar comments on Facebook. In 2023, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank, lauded Wendler’s justification for the drag show cancellation.
But, a writer for the Advocate noted in 2015, there are important distinctions between the two.
“Drag isn’t actually an attempt to portray women in the way that blackface was a racist portrayal of African Americans. Blackface is a lie about a minority group, and drag is an exploration of gender,” the Advocate published in an op-ed. “And more importantly, drag queens are performing an aspect of themselves. When a man puts on a wig and heels, he’s experimenting with his own relationship to ‘boyness’ and ‘girlness.’ In contrast, a blackface performer isn’t expressing the fluidity of his race. He’s just creating a false depiction of someone else.”
If the topic of drag show bans also sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The West Texas A&M case has been bouncing between courts since 2023, with varying outcomes, and regulations against drag shows in Texas have been hot topics for just as long.
It’s also not Kacsymaryk’s first action on Spectrum’s case. In September of 2023, he denied Spectrum’s request for injunctive relief, which would have allowed the group to continue holding shows on campus even as the case proceeded. Kacsymaryck wrote in his opinion that drag shows are not necessarily protected under the First Amendment, and that Wendler was within his authority as president to cancel the show.
A 2024 planned show by Spectrum was similarly cancelled. At that time, the newly-passed Senate Bill 12 restricted “sexually oriented performances” on public property or in the presence of minors and has largely been referred to as a drag show ban.
Kacsymaryk’s recent ruling also honed in on the question of the drag show’s sexual nature and the presence of minors at the shows. According to the lawsuit, Spectrum advertised the planned 2023 show as PG-13 and said minors could only attend with a guardian. Spectrum also said no minors would be allowed at a planned 2026 show. However, Kacsymaryk both questioned the ability of Spectrum to enforce this rule and deemed from testimony from the case’s trial last week that previous performances hosted by Spectrum included sexually suggestive content.
“Drag, by its “provocative,” “transgressive” nature, veers into sexualized content,” Kacsymaryk wrote.
Although Kacsymaryk’s ruling upheld West Texas A&M’s ban on Spectrum’s shows, the legal saga of drag ban challenges is not yet over.
In February of 2025, the A&M Board of Regents voted to ban drag shows across all of the university system’s campuses. A LGBTQ student group at the College Station campus, the Queer Empowerment Council, sued A&M over that action, also arguing it violated their First Amendment rights.
In August of 2025, however, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Kacsymaryck’s 2023 ruling on the West Texas A&M case, saying the drag performances are likely covered under the First Amendment and that Spectrum should be allowed to continue holding the shows on campus while the lawsuit continues.
Two months later, the Fifth Circuit vacated that opinion, and ordered that the case be reheard. That decision could impact the outcome of the Queer Empowerment Council’s case, according to the Texas Tribune. The Texas A&M System asked the Fifth Circuit to pause that case until it decides the West Texas A&M appeal, the Tribune reported in October. Oral arguments in the Fifth Circuit rehearing are scheduled for Jan. 23.