A Texas judge has undertaken a legal battle which she hopes could ultimately reverse the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal across the country. To begin that process she filed a lawsuit last Friday, December 19, 2025, in federal court against the state’s judicial oversight agency.
For McLennan County Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley of Waco, Texas, this follows a yearslong dispute surrounding the issue of gay marriage. Hensley’s dispute has its origins in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges. The High Court’s ruling on June 26, 2015, legalized gay marriage nationwide.
In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Hensley stopped performing marriages altogether. Then roughly one year later, Hensley began performing weddings again, but for straight couples only. By 2018, Hensley’s ‘straight couple’s only’ policy led to complaints.
This is when the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC) entered the picture. The SCJC is the independent state agency responsible for investigating allegations of judicial misconduct and judicial disability. In November of 2019, the SCJC sanctioned Hensley for publicly casting doubt on her own impartiality. Just under five years later, the commission rescinded the order on September 9, 2024. That action had followed Hensley filing of a lawsuit in state court against the committee’s sanctioning against her.
Since then, the Texas Supreme Court clarified, on October 24, 2025, that judges who don't perform weddings for sincere religious reasons are protected from sanctions. But the Judicial Conduct Commission now contends this latest ruling from the Texas Justices says nothing about whether a judge can still marry heterosexual couples, if they opt of same sex weddings.
Hensley says it is that lingering question that left her with the very real possibility that she could still face disciplinary action from the SCJC in the future. These concerns, she says, prompted Hensley to file this latest lawsuit last Friday in federal court.
So Hensley is now arguing as well that the commission is bullying her and other Christian judges and that the legalization of gay marriage is to blame.” The complaint asks the judge to prevent the SCJC from coming after her again and for the courts to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. This could throw the issue back to the states, as they did with the Dobbs case on abortion.
