A federal appeals court upheld Florida’s ban on children attending sexually explicit performances, including drag shows, as lawful, tossing out rulings from lower courts that had found the ban unconstitutional.
Florida lawmakers passed the Protection of Children Act in 2023, which made it a misdemeanor to allow minors into live performances that feature nudity, sexual content, and lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, among other sexually explicit depictions. The law was immediately met with a lawsuit by the restaurant Hamburger Mary’s, which claimed it unconstitutionally banned children from attending drag shows that the restaurant hosts. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the law in an 8-5 ruling, tossing out a federal district court’s ruling finding the law unconstitutional. A three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit also found the law unconstitutional last year, but that ruling was also tossed out by the full bench of the 11th Circuit.
