Texas A&M’s Walter Wendler sued for cancelling drag present

Texas A&M President Walter Wendler (Photograph through college); Drag artist Vidalia Anne Gentry speaks at an unrelated Human Rights Marketing campaign press convention. (John Amis/AP Photographs for HRC)

The president of West Texas A&M College faces a federal lawsuit calling his cancellation of a pupil group’s drag present to learn LGBTQ+ suicide prevention “textbook viewpoint discrimination” that violates the First Modification.

Pupil group Spectrum WT, which scheduled a present titled “A Idiot’s Drag Race” for March 31, seeks an injunction forcing the college to permit the occasion on campus.

Of their 45-page federal lawsuit, the group notes that the college’s president Walter Wendler “confessed he’s censoring” the present for private causes and “unabashedly admitted that doing so violates the Structure.”

A flyer for the scholar drag present (Picture through lawsuit)

“A innocent drag present? Not attainable,” Wendler remarked. “I can’t seem to condone the diminishment of any group on the expense of impertinent gestures towards one other group for any cause, even when the regulation of the land seems to require it.”

The Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression (FIRE), the First Modification group taking on the scholar’s trigger, clarified the regulation in query.

“That ‘regulation of the land’ is the First Modification to the US Structure,” the lawsuit states. “And our Structure prohibits public officers, together with public college presidents, from silencing Individuals as a result of a public official dislikes sure factors of view.”

FIRE’s legal professional Adam Steinbaugh emphasised that the Structure protected all kinds of pupil speech.

“School presidents can’t silence college students just because they disagree with their expression,” Steinbaugh mentioned. “The First Modification protects pupil speech, whether or not it’s gathering on campus to review the Bible, internet hosting an acid-tongued political speaker, or placing on a charity drag present.”