Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice-elect Maggie Ellis (D-Texas) wants to end the religious accommodation for judges who decline to perform same-sex weddings. All five returning Republicans signed the order establishing the protection.
Ellis defeated Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock (R-Texas) on November 3 as Democrats won all four seats on the ballot. She needs Republican support to change the rule. The returning justices are Debra Lehrmann, John Devine, Jane Bland, Rebeca Huddle and Evan Young (all R-Texas).
The court should change its rule so that “either you perform all marriages, or none,” Ellis said in a November 6 interview with The Dallas Morning News. She called the accommodation “back-door discrimination.”
Ellis described herself as a “queer candidate” in a Stonewall Democrats of Austin endorsement questionnaire. She called the order “an attack on our community and our Constitution” and said it prompted her to run.
What the rule protects
Texas law authorizes judges to officiate weddings. The October 24, 2025, order says judges may publicly decline a ceremony based on a “sincerely held religious belief” without violating judicial ethics rules.
On January 9, the court applied that language in Umphress v. Steel. It held that Canon 4A(1) allows judges to decline same-sex weddings on religious grounds while still officiating for opposite-sex couples.
The $640,000 judgment
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a public warning to McLennan County Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley (R-Precinct 1, Place 1) on November 12, 2019. Hensley cited her Christian faith and referred same-sex couples to other officiants. Her conduct cast doubt on her ability to act impartially, the commission said. It withdrew the warning on September 9, 2024.
Texas Supreme Court Justice-elect Chari Kelly (D-Texas) sat on the appeals panel that sent Hensley’s religious freedom claim back to district court on May 30, 2025.
On June 16, a Travis County district court ordered the commission to pay $10,000 in damages and $630,000 in attorney fees, court costs and other expenses under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as The Dallas Express reported. The judgment bars the commission from investigating or disciplining Hensley for declining same-sex weddings on religious grounds, even if she still officiates for opposite-sex couples.
The Plano-based First Liberty Institute, which represented Hensley, opposed the proposal. “First Liberty stands ready to defend any judge affected by this policy,” President Kelly Shackelford said in a statement.
