BoroPride won a court fight to hold its event. But the First Amendment fight isn't over.

After facing months of setbacks, court hearings and tense city meetings, the 2023 BoroPride festival welcomed sizable crowds and unseasonably warm weather last weekend after winning a court order affirming the group’s First Amendment rights against the City of Murfreesboro.

The court decision, the first step in what may prove to be a long court battle to come, joins a growing trend of First Amendment cases across the state dealing with the right of expression for LGTBQ individuals.

BoroPride's order follows almost a year of legal struggles after city officials voted to disallow BoroPride from obtaining event permits, as well as passing an ordinance that effectively criminalized pride events on city property.

That prompted BoroPride organizers along with the Tennessee Equality Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and lawyers Ballard Spahr and Burr Forman to file a lawsuit in early October.

The court order blocked Murfreesboro officials from enforcing its “community decency” policy that was passed in June, as well as a city code that prohibits any display of “homosexuality” on Oct. 28 and 29.

“We are relieved that the court has taken action to ensure that Murfreesboro's discriminatory ordinance will not be enforced during the BoroPride festival," Sanders said in the news release prior to the event. "We look forward to a safe, joyful celebration of Murfreesboro's LGBTQ+ community."

Murfreesboro city spokesperson Mike Browning said in a statement that both parties and the judge accepted an agreement "temporarily suspending enforcement of an ordinance designed to specify certain civil penalties against indecency in public spaces and to protect children from indecent conduct."

"However, other existing state statutes and city ordinances and penalties regarding such conduct remain applicable.”

What does the court order block?

The city of Murfreesboro had barred BoroPride from obtaining an event permit back in November 2022 after City Manager Craig Tindall accused the 2022 BoroPride event of exposing “children to a harmful prurient interest.”

In response to the event, in June 2023 the city passed a “community decency policy” to “assist in the determination of conduct, materials, and events that may be judged as obscene or harmful to minors in accordance with the social morals of the community,” according to the rule’s text.

According to the policy, “No person shall knowingly while in a public space engage in indecent behavior, display, distribute, or broadcast indecent material, conduct indecent events, or facilitate any of the foregoing prohibited acts, or otherwise subject minors to a prurient interest or to behaviors, materials, or events that are patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors.”

However, the policy also states that “indecent behaviors” includes any “sexual conduct”—and in Murfreesboro city code 21-71, displays of “homosexuality” is defined as sexual conduct.

The Oct. 20 court order specifically blocked the city from enforcing the community decency policy, and prohibited the city from considering homosexuality as “indecent behavior” for the event.

"LGBTQ+ people should not have to live in fear of being targeted by their local elected officials, and we will continue to protect this space and the free speech rights of Murfreesboro residents until this ordinance is struck down for good," said the ACLU of Tennessee, Spahr and Forman in a joint statement.

Suit draws links between BoroPride and overturned 'drag ban'

The order is just one win for the group in what may still be a long court battle — the lawsuit, filed on Oct. 6, lays out an extensive argument for the First Amendment rights of BoroPride.

It's the second recent local battle over expression rights against a “community decency” policy—the first of which played out in the city of Franklin in May, where city aldermen attempted to pass a rule that would ban conduct on city property that did “not align with generally accepted community standards of behavior.”

The Franklin policy came after pushback to the previous year’s Pride festival and drag show, and threatened the permitting of the 2023 Franklin Pride event before being shot down in a highly-attended public meeting.

The two policies show a distinct theme: local pushback to Pride and other LGBTQ events in largely conservative communities and the First Amendment clashes that follow.

The Murfreesboro filing draws on a number of similar arguments stated in the case against the 2023 Adult Entertainment Act. The new state law expanded the definition of adult cabaret by, in part, adding "male and female impersonators" and restricting them from performing in public spaces or where children could witness them if the performances were deemed "harmful to minors."

The bill would have impacted some drag performances and became widely known as a "drag ban." The law was overturned by a federal judge in early June.

Indeed, the BoroPride lawsuit points out that five days after the 2022 event, a video of the event’s drag show posted by conservative activist Robby Starbuck and later shared with Tindall was instrumental in the city’s decision to revoke TEP’s event permits.

Starbuck’s wife, Landon Starbuck, was later quoted in the court filings overturning the AEA, with her opposition to BoroPride serving as evidence for those challenging the law that the state bill was blatantly targeting drag performers and therefore a violation of the First Amendment.

The Murfreesboro suit contends the pushback against BoroPride was largely part of the anti-drag push that swept the state last year.

“Mayor McFarland initially and correctly recognized that the First Amendment protected the performances,” the suit said. “But bowing to pressure from anti-drag activists, he quickly reversed course; and instead of abiding by the Federal and State Constitutions, he and Murfreesboro City Manager Craig Tindall intentionally violated the constitutional rights of their constituents. Indeed, within days, McFarland and Tindall set out to ensure BoroPride events would never again be hosted on City property.”

The suit goes on to state that the city’s community decency policy chills free speech and expression—namely “drag performances and other pro-LGBTQ+ messages from TEP and the LGBTQ+ community of Murfreesboro.”

It labels the city’s community decency policy as “staggeringly vague and overbroad”—another argument brought forward in the AEA case—and accuses the city of installing a rule that is a content-based and viewpoint-based restriction on speech.

“In sum, the City policy prohibiting the issuance of permits to TEP and the subsequent denial of TEP’s permit request are unconstitutional prior restraints and infringement on TEP’s protected speech under the First Amendment, as well as unconstitutional retaliation against TEP for exercising its First Amendment rights,” the suit said. “The ordinance passed to silence TEP, on its face, constitutes a content- and viewpoint-based restriction on speech, is substantially overbroad, impermissibly vague, and a violation of TEP’s free speech, equal protection and due process rights.”

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: LGBTQ rights: Boropride held Pride event but legal fight isn't over