Pro Silver Star, the company that owns the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) brand, filed a petition on Friday, October 23, in a Dallas County district court in Texas against My Chemical Romance. The company is seeking a temporary restraining order and an injunction barring the band from using lookalike cheerleader uniforms in its concerts, along with unspecified monetary damages. It is represented by attorney Alex Spiro.
The suit names all four members of the band, Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Ray Toro and Frank Iero; according to TMZ and The Dallas Morning News, it also names concert promoter Live Nation. The company says the filing followed a cease-and-desist letter it sent the band on October 22, a day after the dancers first appeared in the costumes, which the band did not comply with.
Silver Star argues that continued use of the uniforms will cause “irreparable harm to the reputation and goodwill Silver Star has cultivated in the DCC brand.” In the filing, the company says the uniform “is protectable trade dress that no one may use without DCC’s permission.”
The staging is part of the band’s ‘The Black Parade 2026’ concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. According to the petition, on October 21, during ‘Teenagers’, dancers dressed as Dallas cheerleaders performed a pom-pom routine; later, in ‘Disenchanted’, they picked up prop rifles to defend the band from soldiers of Draag, the fictional authoritarian regime that drives the tour’s storyline. Characters on both sides go down in the staged shootout, and the cheerleaders crawl offstage after being shot.
Silver Star says it is not seeking to change the band’s “setlist, narrative, politics, choreography,” or its choice to use gun-toting performers. “Silver Star asks only that those performers not wear the DCC Uniform while doing it,” the petition reads. “The universe of alternative costume designs is effectively unlimited.” The company attached screenshots of social media posts in which concertgoers and online commenters believed the dancers were the real cheerleaders.
According to Silver Star’s legal team, the band repeated the routine at its next show. Digital Music News puts that on October 23, while Stereogum reported it took place at the residency’s second date. The suit was filed the same day the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders unionized, which Stereogum described as seemingly unrelated. My Chemical Romance has not publicly commented on the suit, and no court ruling has been reported.
The shows celebrate 20 years of ‘The Black Parade’, the band’s third album, released October 23, 2006, and are part of the ‘Long Live The Black Parade’ tour, which launched in North America in 2025. The production centers on Draag, a country ruled by the Grand Immortal Dictator, played by Wayne Jay, for whom the band, transformed into The Black Parade, performs to keep him appeased.
The Hollywood Bowl run opened October 21 and continued October 23 and 24. The final two dates, October 30, billed as “Devil’s Night” with The Used, and October 31, a Halloween show with Thrice, close out ‘The Black Parade 2026’ tour. It has not been reported whether the dancers wore the uniforms at the October 24 show.
In February, the same production played Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros on the 13th and 14th. On the Latin American leg, the story was presented as a prequel to the 2025 North American run, with the band held in the M.O.A.T., a prison-like government facility where it is “reconditioned” to perform.