Supreme Court lets challenge to city’s same-sex benefits proceed
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Texas Supreme Court ruling that allowed a conservative challenge to Houston’s extension of employment benefits to the legal spouses of same-sex city employees to proceed.
The state court’s June decision in Pidgeon v. Parker said same-sex couples are not necessarily entitled to government employment benefits, though the ruling does not prevent the city from continuing to offer such benefits to employees’ same-sex spouses.
The city will continue to do so, Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office has said, while the case returns to trial court for a ruling on the merits. The mayor is on a trade mission to China, but his office reiterated that point in a statement Monday.
“The United States Supreme Court’s decision means that further proceedings will likely be required. In the meantime, the city of Houston’s policy to provide benefits remains in effect,” Turner spokeswoman Tanya MakanyRivera said.
The state court’s June ruling asserted that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage rights among gay couples, did not determine whether same-sex couples have spousal benefits.
The city in September asked the high court to review that decision, arguing that the Obergefell decision found that benefits that a state attaches to marriage must be provided equally to all married couples, including those of the same sex.
Jonathan Saenz, president of the conservative nonprofit Texas Values and an attorney for the two
plaintiffs in the case, called the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to review the state court’s decision “a major victory for Texas Values and Houston taxpayers.”
“This is an incredible early Christmas present from the U.S. Supreme Court for taxpayers,” Saenz said. “We’re grateful that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed our lawsuit to go forward.”
Houston began providing benefits in 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
Plaintiffs Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks quickly sued, alleging the payments were an illegal use of taxpayer money.
A year later, a trial court temporarily blocked the city from providing samesex benefits, a ruling that held until July 2015, after the Obergefell ruling.
The all-Republican Texas Supreme Court’s ruling — which instructs the trial court to reconsider the case — came after the court initially had refused to consider the issue, then relented under pressure from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton and dozens of other conservatives.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday clears the way for that reconsideration.
“The court’s action should not be seen as the final word but instead is just another milepost on the road to understanding what benefit plan rights are part of same-gender marriages,” Dallas-based Jackson Walker attorney James Griffin said. “Even the Supreme Court knows that it will likely see this case again.”
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the civil rights group GLAAD, said the U.S. Supreme Court “has just let an alarming ruling by the Texas Supreme Court stand which plainly undercuts the rights of married same-sex couples.
“Today’s abnegation by the nation’s highest court opens the door for an onslaught of challenges to the rights of LGBTQ people at every step,” Ellis said in a statement.
Other advocates, however, said Monday’s action simply shows the Texas case is not fully concluded, rather than indicating how the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately would rule on the larger issue.
“There was high hope that the Texas decision was so wrong that the court wouldn’t sit by and let it go,” said Kenneth Upton, a Dallas-based attorney for the prominent LGBTrights group Lambda Legal. “That’s not how it works with the Supreme Court.”