The US Supreme Court upholds its block on Gov. Ron DeSantis’s drag ban, called the Protection of Children Act, in Florida, which would have banned public drag performances that children could potentially see.
The popular restaurant chain Hamburger Mary’s, which features family-friendly drag performances while diners eat, sued the state of Florida, stating the law violates their First Amendment right. The US Supreme Court temporarily blocked the law in June, citing it was “dangerously susceptible to standardless, overbroad enforcement.”
On Thursday, left-leaning judges were joined by Conservative judges Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barret to deny the state’s request to allow the law to be enforced. Though no statement was issued, Judges Kavanaugh and Barret said the decision says “nothing about our view on whether Florida’s new law violated the First Amendment.” However, they said the case was “an imperfect vehicle for considering the general question of whether a district court may enjoin a government from enforcing a law against non-parties to the litigation.”
Brice Timmons, an attorney representing the restaurant, celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision.
“At this point in time, it is blocked from enforcement because all speech restrictions are presumed unconstitutional,” Timmons said in a statement to CNN. “Florida has not shown why this carve out for the LGBTQ community is special.”
Hamburger Mary’s has returned to its regular operations, dropping the age limit that they imposed to protect themselves from the ban.
This is a major win for the LGBTQ+ community in Florida, where a hostile environment has been created by DeSantis’s narratives that children are being groomed and recruited by the LGBTQ+ community. Many human rights organizations, such as Equality Florida, the NAACP, LULAC, and the Human Rights Campaign, have issued warnings to LGBTQ+ travelers, urging them not to visit the state.
