A Republican district attorney’s plan to “ethically and justly prosecute” performers at a Tennessee drag show over the weekend appeared to backfire Saturday when the event drew double the attendees than the organizers reported during a 2022 iteration of the event.
Several days before a planned drag event at Maryville College—a small liberal arts college outside of Knoxville—Blount County District Attorney Ryan Desmond sent a letter to Blount County Pride organizers announcing plans to enforce the state’s recently passed anti-drag law.
That law, signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee in March, bans drag performances in public places where children are present, with performances by “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators, or similar entertainers” explicitly subject to prosecution, with penalties as severe as felonies.
In June, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump appointee, struck down the law, calling the ban “unconstitutional” in a ruling of his own. However, in Blount’s reading of the decision, the federal judge’s ruling only applied to a single judicial district, thereby leaving performers in his or any other jurisdiction subject to prosecution should they violate the law.
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“It is certainly possible that the event in question will not violate any of the criminal statutes,” Desmond wrote in the letter. “However if sufficient evidence is presented to this office that these referenced criminal statutes have been violated, our office will ethically and justly prosecute these cases in the interest of justice.”
Notably, however, Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti was quick to point out in media reports after the letter that the law remained in effect outside of Shelby County, where the initial case was decided.
And on August 31, The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee quickly filed a lawsuit asking the federal court in eastern Tennessee to block the law from being enforced and declare Desmond’s efforts illegal, describing his letter as a “naked effort to chill free speech” in a news release.
“Threatening to enforce this unconstitutional law amounts to a harmful attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life, which is simply unacceptable,” ACLU-TN legal director Stella Yarbrough said in a statement at the time. “The court has made it abundantly clear that drag performance is constitutionally protected expression under the First Amendment, regardless of where in the state it is performed.”
A federal judge—at least for a short while—agreed.
The day before the event was set to take place, a federal judge in the state granted the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order preventing enforcement of the anti-drag law in Blount County ahead of a September 8 hearing on the ban, thereby allowing Blount Pride and drag performer Flamy Grant, a co-defendant in the case, to hold drag performances at the Blount Pride celebration on Saturday, September 2, as previously scheduled.
And turnout was significant. According to coverage by Tennessee news station WATE, this year’s event drew roughly double the attendance of last year’s event, organizers said, while students from Maryville College announced plans to host similar events in the future.
Desmond, meanwhile, confirmed to Newsweek in an email he intended to respect the court’s decision, and that he did not plan to bring charges against any of the event’s participants.
“We are a nation of laws and this ruling is controlling over my office and our jurisdiction and, as such, we will respect and comply with the order of the Court,” he wrote.