A drag show originally scheduled for Cambier Park in Naples, Florida on June 7, 2025 will now have to be held indoors. Credit: Photo via PrideNaples/Facebook

TALLAHASSEE — Disagreeing with First Amendment arguments, a federal appeals court Friday cleared the way for the city of Naples to place restrictions on a drag show that is part of an LGBTQ “Pridefest” this weekend.

A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, approved a city request for a stay of a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge John Steele issued last month to block the restrictions.

While the stay doesn’t resolve the underlying issues in the case, it means the preliminary injunction is not in effect.

The group Naples Pride filed the lawsuit to challenge restrictions such as a requirement that the drag show be held inside a building with a 200-person capacity and that minors be barred from attending. Naples Pride sought a permit to hold the show at an outdoor mainstage in the city’s Cambier Park, according to Steele’s preliminary injunction ruling.

While the city argued the restrictions were needed to address safety concerns, Steele concluded that they violated First Amendment rights.

“The city’s requirement of an indoor location for the drag performance, even if a good faith attempt to mitigate risk, is clearly viewpoint and content based,” Steele wrote in the May 12 preliminary-injunction ruling. “It is the perceived expressive conduct of the drag performance, and the potential hostile reaction it may engender in others, that caused the city to restrict the drag performance to the inside of a small building, and to disallow a performance at Cambier Park’s bandshell.”

But Friday’s majority opinion by the appeals-court panel disagreed with that conclusion and said similar restrictions were used in 2023 and 2024.

The opinion, shared by Judges Robert Luck and Andrew Brasher, said the “two permit conditions were not added based on Naples Pride’s viewpoint. And they were reasonable in light of the special event.”

“Naples Pride will not be substantially injured by a stay because it can hold the drag performance under the same two permit conditions that applied to the last two performances, in 2023 and 2024,” the opinion said. “And the public has an interest in the enforcement of the city’s ordinance and the safety of residents and visitors in the city.”

But Judge Nancy Abudu, in a dissenting opinion, backed Steele’s conclusion and wrote that the city’s “requirements that the performance be held only inside and that only those 18 years old and over can attend are undeniably viewpoint and content based.”

The battle over the Naples event has come amid a broader dispute about a 2023 state law designed to prevent children from going to drag shows.

A sharply divided panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court last month upheld a preliminary injunction that blocked that law on First Amendment grounds. Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office this week asked for a rehearing, potentially by the full appeals court. A Central Florida venue, Hamburger Mary’s, challenged the law.

In her dissent Friday in the Naples case, Abudu pointed to the appeals court ruling in the Hamburger Mary’s case. She wrote that unless that ruling is overturned, it “remains a valid basis for the district court’s conclusion that Naples Pride is likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claims.”

But a footnote in Friday’s majority opinion drew a distinction between the cases. It said the Naples case “is about the city’s special event ordinance as applied to Naples Pride’s special event. It has nothing to do with (the state law), and our decision in (the Hamburger Mary’s case) says nothing about whether the district court abused its discretion by granting a preliminary injunction here.”

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This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2025.