Ana Mota, South Grand Prairie High School Theatre – ABC News 8 Screenshots
A Texas school district canceled a high school production of Little Shop of Horrors after officials objected to a female student playing the musical’s male lead, citing the state’s controversial anti-drag law.
Ana Mota, a senior at South Grand Prairie High School, was cast as Seymour, a nerdy flower shop worker who discovers a strange, bloodthirsty plant.
Mota has performed in several local productions, playing Jack in Into the Woods and the title character in Pinocchio. Having played male characters before, she thought nothing of auditioning for Little Shop of Horrors, noting that cross-gender casting is common in theater.
But a week into rehearsals, Grand Prairie Independent School District officials told Mota she could no longer play the role.
District officials cited Texas’ anti-drag law, Senate Bill 12, as the reason Mota could not play a male character, according to The Dallas Morning News. The law prohibits “sexually explicit” performances in the presence of minors and includes language targeting a performer who “uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers” to appear as a person of the sex that does not match their assigned sex at birth.
District officials offered Mota the option of sharing the role of Audrey, the musical’s female lead, with another student. When she declined, the district canceled the production.
“I was frustrated because I had earned a role and I worked hard for it, and I wasn’t allowed to play it,” Mota told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA. She added that the show’s cancellation “feels more like a punishment to everyone in the cast.”
The Grand Prairie Independent School District said in a statement that its decision to cancel Little Shop of Horrors “and find something more appropriate” was also based on the musical’s themes, including the romance between Seymour and Audrey and Audrey’s abusive relationship with another character.
Mota questioned how the district could consider Little Shop of Horrors a “sexually oriented performance” under Texas’ anti-drag law. She also rejected the notion that playing Seymour would violate the law, telling The Dallas Morning News that “this isn’t drag at all.”
Mota’s mother, Nancy Jimenez-Mota, accused district leaders of “making decisions based on nothing but fear,” telling The Dallas Morning News that their rights “are being trampled.”
District leaders addressed the controversy at an October 15 school board meeting.
Grand Prairie ISD Board President Emily Liles said the superintendent determined that the production would violate a Texas law enacted in 2025. As a result, district officials decided to “halt the production, regroup, and move forward.”
Mota’s mother challenged the school board to identify which provision of Texas Senate Bill 12 would prohibit her daughter from playing a male character. She also said the superintendent had not responded to her inquiries.
The district has since announced that South Grand Prairie High School will stage Frozen instead of Little Shop. Mota plans to audition for the replacement musical, which will be among her final productions before graduating.
Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told The Dallas Morning News that the district’s decision to bar Mota from playing a role she earned could violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education.
“You cannot simply deny a student an opportunity because she is a girl,” Patel said. “This is a very clear example of a problematic state law causing confusion.”
Texas’ anti-drag law has twice been ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge David Hittner, first in September 2023 and again in August 2026. Although a federal appeals court overturned his initial injunction, Hittner subsequently found that the law violated the First Amendment. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the latest ruling.
The U.S. Department of Education has unveiled a final rule that rescinds protections for LGBTQ college students against sexual assault and discrimination that were made possible due to an expanded interpretation of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in educational settings.
The rule, published on September 29, stops short of explicitly defining "sex," as it appears in the text of Title IX, as biological sex, as reported by Politico. However, the Trump administration claimed, in a fact sheet, that the rule does not reflect any new policy decisions.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned the voluntary manslaughter conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court "erred" by preventing him from using the victim's transgender identity in his self-defense claim.
Samuel Ward Jr. fatally shot Paris Lee at her home in Cordova, Tennessee, on June 29, 2022. A Shelby County jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.
In testimony presented at trial, Ward's account was that he had gone to Lee's home and gotten into a verbal altercation with her, during which she asked him to leave. According to the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, he claimed Lee pointed a gun at him while they were at the top of a staircase, causing him to fall backward. He told police that he drew his own weapon and fired upward from the bottom of the stairs, striking Lee.
Hungarian lawmakers have voted to remove anti-LGBTQ provisions from a 2021 "child protection" law adopted under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
By a 139-51 margin, the Hungarian parliament passed a bill retaining protections against material that can "seriously impair the child's physical, intellectual, emotional, or moral development." But the amended law removes bans on the "portrayal" or "promotion" of sexual or gender diversity, according to Agence France-Presse. The term "promotion" was ill-defined and interpreted broadly under the Orbán regime.
The vote marks the first significant reversal of the Orbán regime's efforts to crack down on LGBTQ visibility. Prime Minister Péter Magyar won a landslide victory in April, ending 16 years of rule by Orbán's Fidesz party.
You must be logged in to post a comment.