Travis marriage challenge dropped
State to dismiss appeal in light of U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex ruling.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton plans to dismiss an appeal challenging a Travis County judge’s February ruling that found the state’s ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 decision declaring gay couples have a fundamental right to marry left no legal
controversy to be decided by Texas’ highest civil court, the attorney general’s offiffice said Monday.
Once the appeal to the Texas Supreme Court is dropped, Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman will be able to continue a case asking him to determine if an eight-year relationship between two Austin women should be recognized as a common- law marriage. Paxton’s offiffice, however,
has not yet decided whether to continue a separate appeal in a Travis County case that allowed two Austin women to get married in February.
The Travis County cases
are among the final loose ends remaining in the legal battle over gay marriage in Texas.
Some Republicans aren’t ready to give up the fight, including state Rep. Cecil Bell, who on Monday unveiled an organization designed to pressure elected officials to reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.
“People are deeply concerned about the erosion of moral values and the abandonment of our Constitution,” said Bell, R-Magnolia. “The sleeping giant is awake and filled with the pent-up frustration (toward) state and elected officials who lack the will to assert our state sovereignty.”
Bell introduced four bills that would have made it difficult for gay couples to marry in Texas if the Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage, but none of those measures passed in the legislative session that ended June 1.
Continuing his fight, Bell announced the creation of the Pact for Constitutional Restoration of State Sovereignty, which will seek to rally voters against gay marriage.
One of Bell’s first orders of business will be to press Congress to impeach the five Supreme Court justices who overturned state bans on gay marriage.
“It is glaringly clear to citizens that these justices are guilty of bad behavior,” Bell said during a news conference, according to a transcript provided by his office.
Also Monday, an ongoing dispute in Hood County ended when the county clerk’s office issued a marriage license to Jim Cato and Joe Stapleton shortly after the Granbury men sued Clerk Katie Lang.
Lang greeted the Supreme Court’s ruling with a statement saying she would not issue licenses to gay couples because she had religious objections to samesex marriage. Lang later amended her statement, saying other members of her office would be available to issue licenses.
The couple’s lawsuit argued that while most Texas counties were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Lang said gay couples would have to wait several weeks until her office received gender-neutral license applications.
Austin lawyer Jan Soifer, who represented Cato and Stapleton, said she will not dismiss the lawsuit “until and unless we have an agreement from Clerk Lang that her office will issue marriage licenses to all couples, gay and straight, without delay, and an agreement to pay Jim and Joe’s attorneys’ fees for being forced to file the lawsuit.”
The Travis County marriage cases began Feb. 17, when Herman found the state’s ban on samesex marriage to be unconstitutional as part of an estate fight in which Austin resident Sonemaly Phrasavath sought to have her longtime relationship with another woman, Stella Powell, declared a common-law marriage. Powell died last summer of colon cancer.
Two days later, state District Judge David Wahlberg ordered the Travis County clerk’s office to issue a marriage license to Sarah Goodfriend and Suzanne Bryant, citing Goodfriend’s poor health.
At Paxton’s request, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily blocked both rulings in February, and then began accepting legal briefs on how it should ultimately rule.
During a Monday hearing on the common-law marriage case, a lawyer for Paxton told Herman that the appeal would be dropped in that case. Herman then set an Oct. 5 hearing to determine if Phrasavath and Powell were in a common-law marriage.
“We’re going to treat it like any other common-law marriage case in Texas, which is all we’ve ever wanted,” said Brian Thompson, lawyer for Phrasavath.