By Catholics for Catholics
Judge Dianne Hensley of Waco, Texas filed a lawsuit last week seeking to overturn Obergefell, the landmark Supreme Court decision from 2015 that legalized same-sex “marriage”.
Judge Hensley has been a justice of the peace since 2015 and is therefore able to officiate marriage ceremonies in Texas. Prior to the Obergefell decision, she had officiated approximately 80 wedding ceremonies. According to the lawsuit, after the Obergefell decision was handed down, Hensley continued to officiate opposite-sex marriages, but morally could not officiate same-sex marriages due to her Christian beliefs and also in accordance with Texas law which still defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Therefore, Judge Hensley would refer same-sex couples to other officiants in McLennan County who were willing to perform the ceremony.
The lawsuit continues:
When the State Commission on Judicial Conduct learned of Judge Hensley’s practices, it opened an investigation. The Commission’s investigation culminated in a “public warning” that declared Judge Hensley in violation of Canon 4A(1) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which states: “A judge shall conduct all of the judge’s extra-judicial activities so that they do not cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge . . . .”
In October 2025, however, the Supreme Court of Texas unanimously adopted a comment to Canon 4 of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct that says that it is not a violation if a judge refrains from performing wedding ceremonies due to personal religious beliefs.
Yet, even with this decision, the State Commission continues to hold Judge Hensley in violation so she is “facing the same threats of disciplinary action that she faced before the new comment to Canon 4, and she is unable to resume performing weddings for opposite-sex couples without exposing herself to investigation and retaliation from the commissioners.”
In her efforts to politely accommodate same-sex couples, Judge Hensley had an arrangement with a justice of the peace just three blocks away who would accept all of her referrals, including as walk-ins, and for the same fee. Furthermore, no same-sex couple ever submitted a complaint regarding this arrangement.
Judge Hensley is asking the Supreme Court to “enter a declaratory judgment that nothing in Obergefell or the U.S. Constitution requires state-licensed officiants—either clergy or judges—to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, even if the officiant chooses to perform opposite-sex weddings.”
Furthermore, Hensley is asking the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell for its fundamentally erroneous logic. On Obergefell, the lawsuit continues:
The Commission’s bullying of Judge Hensley and its menacing behavior toward other Christian judges is the direct result of the Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Obergefell that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, and that anyone who opposes homosexual marriage is therefore an enemy of the Constitution. This has emboldened activists and politicians to embark on a campaign of intimidation against individuals and institutions who dare to express the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman—even when the expressions of this belief are supposed to be protected by the Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause…
…Yet there is nothing in the language of the Constitution that even remotely suggests that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, and the Obergefell opinion failed to identify any provision of constitutional text that establishes this supposed constitutional right to homosexual marriage.
Furthermore, the “Constitution makes no allowance for the Supreme Court to invent constitutional rights that have no grounding in constitutional text or historical practice, and Obergefell violates the Tenth Amendment and the Republican Form of Government Clause by subordinating state laws to the policy preferences of unelected judges.”
The case, Hensley v. Steel, is now awaiting a decision from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
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