Gay marriage is legal in Texas. A justice who won't marry same-sex couples heads to court anyway

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/10/25/texas-supreme-court-gay-marriage-case/ [login to see] 7/
The Texas Supreme Court is reconsidering the case of a justice of the peace who for years turned away gay couples who wanted to get married even after same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide.

Oral arguments begin Wednesday in the case of Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco who was reprimanded by the state’s judicial conduct commission in 2019 for only performing heterosexual weddings.

The new phase of the litigation is the first page in the final chapter of a controversial case that has lingered in the Texas court system – and hung over LGBTQ people in the state – for years. It’s yet another legal fight at the intersection of religious freedom and the civil rights of queer and transgender Americans. In recent years, as the makeup of the nation’s highest court has grown more conservative, that fight has only become more pronounced in lower courts across the country.