The Texas Supreme Court will hear the case this week of Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley, who is suing the Texas Commission on Judicial Misconduct after it issued a warning to her in 2019 for her stance against marrying same-sex couples. She claims a religious freedom law gives her the right to refuse to marry them. The attorney behind the novel Texas “vigilante” or “bounty” abortion ban is among those representing her.
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“While its aim is narrow, her lawsuit is one of several in Texas and across the country that could whittle away at the rights gay people have won in recent years,” The Dallas Morning News reports. “Hensley’s lawyers include Jonathan Mitchell, the former state solicitor general who wrote the Texas law that allows citizens to file a lawsuit against anyone who knowingly ‘aids or abets’ an abortion. Her lawyers argue the judge should be able to cite her faith to refuse to wed gay couples if an alternative officiant is offered.”
Hensley first sued in 2019, after the Commission “issued a public warning that said Hensley’s conduct cast doubt on her capacity to act impartially when it came to someone’s sexuality.”
“She cited the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a state law that says a government agency can’t ‘substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion’ unless it ‘is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest.’”
Hensley has assembled a team that includes Mitchell and First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal organization. A former First Liberty attorney, Matthew Kacsmaryk, was appointed by Donald Trump to the federal bench. He has made several controversial rulings, including the ban on mifepristone, medication used to induce an abortion.
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“My experience is, the closer I follow the Scriptures, the better my life goes. And this is pretty foundational. And I’m not going to get into it, but as an abstinence speaker, I dealt a whole lot with the sequelae of same-sex relationships,” Hensley told The News. “She described ‘sequelae’ as, ‘The medical after-effects of what you’ve done. So, you have wide — much greater issues, medically.’ Asked to clarify once more, she said she believes gay people experience ‘a higher incidence of STDs.’”
The Commission has been forced to hire private attorneys news after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sided with Hensley.
“The public warning [the commission gave Hensley] is not about her religious beliefs, nor does it require her to conduct ceremonies to marry anyone,” Lang said in a statement, The News reports. It “is about her conduct that demonstrates her bias against certain citizens of the State of Texas.”
Southern Methodist University (SMU) Dedman School of Law constitutional law chair Dale Carpenter told The News, “It would be unprecedented for the court to declare that judges marrying people in courthouses have the power to shut the courthouse doors to same-sex couples wanting the official duties of judges that is allowed only by Texas state law.”
He added, “That endangers the appearance of impartiality that legal ethics principles have long required.”
* Original Article:
https://www.alternet.org/amp/texas-judge-gay-couples-scriptures-2666047358
