Friday morning the Texas Supreme Court overturned a temporary order to prevent the payment of same-sex marriage benefits to city employees in Houston. It also overturned an appeals court ruling.
That means the benefits can be paid while the case is pending. However, the court made it clear that is not the final ruling in the case.
“Today, however, we are dealing only with an interlocutory appeal,” the Texas Supreme Court said. In other words, the case is not over and the ruling was intentionally narrow.
In 2013, then-Mayor of Houston Annise Parker decided to provide same-sex spousal benefits to city employees who married in other states. Social conservatives sued to block the benefits.
A trial court issued a temporary injunction to stop the benefits while the case was on trial or appeal. That temporary injunction was already removed by an appeals court. The high-court removed both the temporary injunction and the appeals court ruling.
In other words, the case goes back to the trial court and continues.
“We hold that the court of appeals’ judgment does not bar [the Plaintiff Jack] Pidgeon from seeking all appropriate relief on remand or bar the Mayor from opposing that relief,” the supreme court ruling said.
The Texas high-court’s ruling acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges settles some issues related to same-sex marriage but not all of them.
“The Supreme Court held in Obergefell that the Constitution requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages to the same extent that they license and recognize opposite-sex marriages,” the Texas Supreme Court ruled. “But it did not hold that states must provide the same publicly funded benefits to all married persons…”
The Texas Supreme Court refused to say there was an inherent right to government-funded same-sex-marriage spousal benefits. But it also did not rule out the possibility in future rulings.
The trial court in the Houston case was ordered to proceed without the temporary order. But it was also ordered to proceed with an intentional lack of specific instructions whether Obergefell should be interpreted broadly or narrowly.
CLICK HERE to see the ruling.
