The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-5 on Tuesday that Florida's ban on children attending drag shows is constitutional, reversing a lower court that had blocked the law and handing Governor Ron DeSantis one of the clearest cultural wins of his tenure.
The left litigated this for three years. They lost.
The Florida Protection of Children Act, signed in 2023, prohibits minors from attending "adult live performances" that depict or simulate nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement, and that "predominantly appeal to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest" without "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for the age of the child present." Venues that violate the law face fines of $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for each subsequent violation, plus potential license suspension.
Hamburger Mary's, a bar and restaurant chain that regularly features drag shows, challenged the law and initially won at the district court level. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit upheld that injunction 2-1 in May 2025. DeSantis petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case — but the full 11th Circuit agreed to rehear it en banc.
Judge Andrew Brasher, writing for the 8-5 majority, didn't mince words. "We are convinced the district court erred," he wrote, finding that the lower court "lacked authority to impose a universal injunction that prevented the enforcement of the Act" and that "Hamburger Mary's was not entitled to even a more limited preliminary injunction."
Brasher cut straight to the core of it: "There is no doubt the Act is rational. We will not second-guess the Florida Legislature's decision to regulate obscenity." He added that "preventing children from attending adult live performances obscene for them is rationally related" to the state's interest in protecting minors.
Judge Robin Rosenbaum dissented, writing that the law "wields a shotgun when the First Amendment allows a scalpel at most" and accusing Florida of creating what she called a "mess-around-and-find-out statute to chill drag."
Which tells you everything about where the opposition's head is. The majority said protecting children from sexually explicit performances is rational. The dissent said the real problem is that drag performers might feel discouraged. Those are the two positions. Pick one.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called it a "huge victory." DeSantis himself noted: "This shouldn't even be controversial, yet our law protecting kids required us to fend off lawsuits."
He's not wrong. The law doesn't ban drag. It doesn't ban adult performances. It says children can't attend performances that are sexually explicit by the law's own detailed, three-part definition. That's it. The fact that this required a three-year legal battle, a trip to the Supreme Court's doorstep, and an en banc rehearing tells you more about the woke gay/lesbian/trans crowd than it does about the statute.
The "but it's art" defense never held up because the law already accounts for it — performances with "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" for the child's age are explicitly excluded. The objection was never really about the First Amendment. It was about whether anyone is allowed to draw a line at all.
Eight federal judges just said yes. The line holds.