In a first of its kind challenge to the "settled law" of marriage equality, the Texas Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a case that questions to what extent Texas has to treat same-sex couples equally. The case, Pidgeon v. Turner was brought by a pair of ahem, bigoted Houston taxpayers and "religious conscientious objectors" by the names of Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks who don't like the fact that the city of Houston provides spousal benefits to all couples, gay and straight. As Slate explains, their attorneys are pointing to a state law, Texas's all but defunct gay marriage ban, that specifically bars state entities from providing benefits to same-sex couples. Furthermore, they argue that the two Supreme Court cases that most legal experts would say settle the issue of marriage quality, 2013's United States v. Windsor and 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges, don't relegate Texas's law to the history bin.
Hopefully, judges at the Texas Supreme Court will shut this down quickly, however they tried to avoid hearing the case already, last September, and have now been compelled to do so by anti-gay activists and Republican officials. This despite the fact that the SCOTUS ruling in 2015 was quite sweeping and specific in saying same-sex couples deserved "equal dignity", and prohibiting states from denying "all the benefits" associated with marriage to all couples.
The argument these two Houston jerks put forth, though, is that while the state and its cities may have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they don't have to go any further than that in providing benefits.
Justice John Devine, a conservative on the Texas Supreme Court, issued a dissent with some bizarre logic to the court's decision not to hear the case back in September, agreeing with the idea that spousal benefits aren't guaranteed under the SCOTUS rulings.
Devine wrote:
After all, benefits such as health insurance provide financial security as couples decide whether to have a child. An opposite-sex marriage is the only marital relationship where children are raised by their biological parents. In any other relationship, the child must be removed from at least one natural parent, perhaps two, before being adopted by her new parent(s). This does not diminish any child’s inherent dignity, a fact the City presumably recognizes by extending benefits to their employees’ children regardless of the employees’ marital status. But it does explain why the State might choose to direct resources to opposite-sex couples.
I guess he missed the whole in-vitro fertilization phenomenon?
Pidgeon and Hicks's attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, argued in court on Wednesday that health insurance, for instance, is not a fundamental right. And "We don’t know if Obergefell compels equal treatment with regard to nonfundamental rights."
And, unfortunately, because this is Texas, some of the justices are sympathetic to the idea of withholding benefits from gay couples some of them, perhaps, with a view toward not being voted off the bench by conservative constituencies. But, as Slate explains, the court is like to side-step having to rule on the merits of this case by dismissing it on standing grounds instead, because "taxpayers are rarely allowed to challenge laws they dislike just because they help fund them."
Stay tuned.