Will Texas State Officials Defy the Supreme Court?

“The oath of office I take says I support the laws and Constitution of the United States; it says that first.” Thus spoke Dallas County Clerk John Warren when he announced that his office would begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the event of a favorable Supreme Court ruling later this month. Warren likewise indicated that he would be prepared to act within an hour and a half of the ruling, and that he had already approved overtime for his staff in order to accommodate what would surely be unprecedented demand. Other counties are following suit. Bexar County clerk Gerry Rickhoff has not only redesigned the license itself so that it does not address gender, but has also indicated that he is prepared to keep his office open 24 hours a day if necessary. And Travis County clerk Dana DeBeauvoir will be prepared to issue marriage licenses promptly, as she has done before. So we know Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio will be prepared to comply with a favorable Supreme Court decision on marriage equality the day it’s rendered. Unfortunately, however, same sex-couples who live in Houston—the state’s largest city and the most diverse in the country—might have to wait. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart has stated that he will seek “guidance” from the state’s Attorney General before issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples—and he’s made it perfectly and disturbingly clear that his reasons for preventing same-sex marriages are personal: “They're destroying an institution, the institution of marriage.” On the state level, politicians are reacting about as well as one would expect from a group of people who celebrate their opposition to marriage equality with slices of hate cake. The fact that their statements are predictable, however, doesn’t make them any less alarming. Representative Cecil Bell, who authored several retrograde anti-LGBT measures in the last legislative session, has stated that it would be “disappointing” to see county clerks “acting outside of Texas law,” suggesting that compliance with a Supreme Court ruling were somehow illegal. Naturally Bell added that such a ruling “is not an edict that sweeps across the land,” although that is precisely what a Supreme Court ruling does. Like Bell, Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose “guidance” Stan Stanart and other clerks may seek on decision day, has stated publicly that he is “committed to defending the Texas Constitution and self-government by Texans”—the subtext being that he intends to pursue bureaucratic obstructionism if he finds the Supreme Court decision unacceptable to him and, apparently, “the will of the people of Texas.” This is in spite of the fact that polls clearly show that a strong majority of Texas voters believe that discrimination against the LGBT community is a problem. Let the Attorney General and county clerks throughout the state know that you want them to do what their oaths and their duties already bind them to do: to obey and uphold the law of the land.