Florida AG Subpoenas Venue For A List Of Guests Who Attended A Drag Show

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wants to intimidate drag queens and gay bars. It’s not going as planned.

Florida AG James Uthmeier, public domain

Florida man and Attorney General James Uthmeier is using every legal weapon in his arsenal to crack down on queer life. But he’s faced a setback—Floridians are resisting.

Uthmeier has pounced on the Kilted Mermaid, a gay-friendly bar in the small(ish) town of Vero Beach, off of Florida’s East Coast. The beloved community establishment routinely hosts drag events, some of which are family-friendly and others that are restricted to adult audiences.

Because one of the events hosted during Pride was advertised as “all ages welcome” on social media, Uthmeier “opened an investigation into this sexualized performance to determine the extent of the content and exposure to children,” a press release from his office said.

Uthmeier said Kilted Mermaid violated “the innocence of children” with “perversions” by allowing them to be in the presence of drag queens, and he subpoenaed the venue for a list of performers and guests that night, as well as surveillance footage. Conservatives called for the owner—who is also the town’s Vice Mayor, Linda Moore—to resign.

Moore told reporters she won’t resign and plans to continue hosting queer events. Earlier this week, despite state repression, the Kilted Mermaid hosted Drag Queen Bingo. "We have no intention of cancelling," Moore said on July 23. "It's out of the question."

This has outraged Jennifer Pippin, the county’s chair of Moms for Liberty, who told NBC News that she had submitted the “all ages” event flyer to the AG. She said she didn’t know the state’s anti-drag law had already been blocked when she filed her report, but that Uthmeier’s office assured other state laws could be used to prosecute the venue. Neither Pippin nor her children were at the event, nor were they personally solicited for the event, as far as public reports indicate.

But the legal repercussions, including the subpoena, signal a dangerous game that the Governor and AG are playing. “To be clear: no one has been charged with a crime,” writes Rindala Alajaji of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “His office is now fishing for personal data about everyone who attended or performed at the event. This should set off every civil liberties alarm bell we have.”

“The Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that subpoenas forcing disclosure of members of peaceful organizations have a chilling effect on free expression,” Alajaji continued. “Whether it’s a civil rights protest, a church service, or, yes, a drag show: the First Amendment protects the confidentiality of lists of attendees.”

There is zero publicly reported evidence to suggest children were present for the adults-only segment of the show. But even if there were, the basis of Uthmeier’s hostile expedition into drag bars is built on faulty ground. The law that the bar allegedly violated, “Protection of Children Act,” was blocked by federal courts because it was deemed “overbroad” after another drag venue, Hamburger Mary’s, sued the state over the provision. The law threatened to impose fines on, revoke the liquor license of, and/or press a misdemeanor charge against any person or entity that allows “children” to attend an event “in front of a live audience which, in whole or in part, depicts [...] lewd conduct.”

By “providing only vague guidance as to which performances it prohibits, the Act wields a shotgun when the First Amendment allows a scalpel at most,” the appellate court found. And even though the law does not name drag shows in as many words, in the press, “its enactors focused on how it would restrict [that] one particular type of performance.”

The Sunshine State has become synonymous with some of the country’s most insidious anti-LGBT and authoritarian policies in recent years—from “Don’t Say Gay” to the Governor’s fraternization with authoritarian, anti-trans demagogues both domestically and overseas. He even met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who recently moved to ban any LGBT Pride festivities in the country.

The Kilted Mermaid events are just the latest example of everyday Floridians who refuse to cave to state repression of LGBT life. Earlier this year, organizers in Jacksonville went viral for illuminating a bridge with rainbow lights for Pride Month in defiance of DeSantis’s orders to do otherwise. In 2022, after “Don’t Say Gay” was passed, students across the state staged walkouts despite retaliatory disciplinary action, including at least one suspension. And in March, a girl entered the women’s restroom in the state capitol building despite the threat of arrest. She was charged and arrested for trespassing because she is trans. But the case never went to trial; after international outcry, the charges were dropped.

Uthmeier’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter, nor did they answer questions on whether the AG would further act or comment on another resurfaced controversy about a Florida nightlife venue, one that has actually been connected to child sex abuse: Mar-a-Lago. The Palm Beach estate serves as President Donald Trump’s Florida residence, and an apparent hunting ground for the convicted sex-trafficking kingpin, Jeffrey Epstein.