Amid GOP Pressure, Texas High Court to Hear Challenge to Spousal Benefits

The Texas Supreme Court Friday agreed to hear a case challenging some of the rights gained with marriage equality.

The case involves whether the city of Houston is obligated to provide benefits to same-sex spouses of city employees, The Dallas Morning News reports. In September the high court had declined to hear the case, but justices reversed that decision amid pressure from top Republican state officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Jack Pidgeon, a Houston pastor, and Larry Hicks, a local accountant, first sued the city in 2013, when then-Mayor Annise Parker decided to provide the benefits, despite a voter-approved amendment to the city charter banning such benefits. The trial court found in their favor and enjoined the city from offering the benefits, but the city won on appeal.

Then, when the state Supreme Court decided not to hear Pidgeon and Hicks's appeal of that ruling, it cited the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court marriage equality decision, saying that had rendered the case moot.

Pidgeon and Hicks disagreed, as did the state's top Republicans. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in October, Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton, all known for anti-LGBT stances, contended that the marriage equality ruling "does not include a command that public employers like the City of Houston take steps beyond recognizing same-sex marriage -- steps like subsidizing same-sex marriages (through the allocation of employee benefits) on the same terms as traditional marriages." Many state legislators and religious leaders also urged the Texas high court to hear the case, the Morning News reports.

The Texas justices will hear oral arguments March 1. "While their ruling will be narrow -- it will apply only to city employees in Houston -- the decision will either reinforce the rights of gay Americans or chip away at their victory in gaining the right to marry," the Morning News notes.

With Donald Trump taking office as president, given his promise to appoint conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices in mold of the late Antonin Scalia, LGBT Americans are concerned that their rights will be undermined. Trump has sent mixed signals on marriage equality. At times he has said he would appoint justices who would overturn the marriage ruling if the right case came before them; at other times he has called marriage equality a settled issue.

Parker, Houston's first lesbian mayor, retired last year due to term limits. The city's current mayor, therefore the primary defendant in the suit, is Sylvester Turner.