Protect The 1st Foundation
  • About
    • Leadership
  • Issues
  • Scorecards
  • News
  • Take Action
    • Educational Choice for Children Act
    • PRESS Act
    • Save Oak Flat Act
  • DONATE
  • About
    • Leadership
  • Issues
  • Scorecards
  • News
  • Take Action
    • Educational Choice for Children Act
    • PRESS Act
    • Save Oak Flat Act
  • DONATE
Picture

The Real Drag Behind Tennessee’s Drag Ban – Poorly Drafted Laws

6/5/2023

 
Picture
Tennessee’s short-lived ban on drag shows finally met its end in federal court on Friday at the hands of a judge who ruled it unconstitutional while explicitly recognizing the right of Tennessee voters to protect children from sexually explicit materials. The question that remains is why legislators so often pass unconstitutional messaging bills that are doomed to die in court.
 
Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (AEA) banned “adult cabaret performances” on public property or in locations where the performance “could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.” The law not only outlawed male or female impersonators, but also “exotic” dancers.
 
As Protect The 1st pointed out, AEA could conceivably outlaw performances of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, or outdoor showings of Mrs. Doubtfire or Tootsie, or even dancing ladies announcing the circus is coming. The state’s attorney referred to a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that “harmful to minors” would only include “materials which lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for a reasonable 17-year-old.” In other words, leave it to endless litigation to determine what is literature, art, science, or political discourse, not to mention the rare species of reasonable 17-year-olds.
 
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas L. Parker saw the vacuity of this law. He agreed with the plaintiffs, a Memphis-based theater group threatened with the felony of producing drag shows, that the law’s “harmful to minors standard” is “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.”
 
In the opening of his brief, Judge Parker gave a ringing description of the First Amendment. He wrote:
 
“Freedom of speech is not just about speech. It is also about the right to debate with fellow citizens on self-government, to discover the truth in the marketplace of ideas, to express one’s identity, and to realize self-fulfillment in a free society.”
 
In the conclusion of his 70-page opinion, Judge Parker wrote:
 
“Let there be no mistake about this Court’s recognition that Tennessee has a compelling government interest in protecting its minor population. Scores of concerned Tennesseans asked the Court to uphold the Adult Entertainment Act because their State supposedly enacted it to protect their children. Tennesseans deserve to know that their State’s defense of the AEA primarily involved a request for the Court to alter the AEA by changing the meaning of ‘minors’ to a ‘reasonable 17-year-old minor.’ In other words, while its citizens believed this powerful law would protect all children, the State’s lawyers told the Court this law will only protect 17-year-olds. This is only one of several ways in which Tennessee asked this Court to rewrite the AEA.
 
“To rewrite this law would not only violate the separation-of-powers principle, but it would also offer perverse incentives for legislators to continue their troubling trend of abdicating their responsibilities in exercising ‘considered legislative judgment.’”
 
The short journey of this law from passage to being overturned is a visible result of a national trend: Namely, voters are sending declining numbers of candidates with law degrees to state legislatures. Perhaps if more legislators were lawyers, they would craft bills that respect the First Amendment and the Constitution.

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021

    Categories

    All
    2022 Year In Review
    2023 Year In Review
    2024 Year In Review
    Amicus Briefs
    Analysis
    Book Banning
    Campus Speech
    Censorship
    Congress
    Court Hearings
    Donor Privacy
    Due Process
    First Amendment
    First Amendment Online
    Freedom Of Press
    Freedom Of Religion
    Freedom Of Speech
    Government Transparency
    In The Media
    Journalism
    Law Enforcement
    Legal
    Legislation
    Legislative Agenda
    Letters To Congress
    Motions
    News
    Online Speech
    Opinion
    Parental Rights
    PRESS Act
    PT1 Amicus Briefs
    Save Oak Flat
    School Choice
    SCOTUS
    Section 230
    Speaking Of The First Amendment
    Supreme Court

    RSS Feed

we  the  people.

LET  YOUR  VOICE  BE  HEARD:


ABOUT

Who We Are

​Leadership

ISSUES

1st Amendment

TAKE ACTION

Donate

​Contact Us
® Copyright 2024 Protect The 1st Foundation