[caption id=”attachment_138973″ align=”aligncenter” width=”847″] Ken Paxton speaks after he was sworn in as Texas attorney general in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Sunday that county clerks are able to refuse to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples where their religious convictions oppose it.
Paxton said that the Supreme Court’s “flawed” ruling Friday “weakened the rule of law but did nothing to weaken our resolve to protect religious liberty and return to democratic self-government in the face of judicial activists attempting to tell us how to live.”
He also wrote in his formal opinion that judges and justices of the peace are able to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.
From Paxton’s opinion:
According to the American-Statesman, Austin lawyer Jody Scheske, an advocate of same-sex marriage, slammed Paxton’s opinion, saying, “We settled the idea that public officials can pick which citizens to serve or not in the ’50s and ’60s civil rights litigation. They cannot.”
Paxton explained in his opinion that a county clerk who does not wish to perform the ceremony may delegate the act to an employee, though that employee has the right to refuse the performance as well.
“County clerks and their employees retain religious freedoms that may provide accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses,” Paxton wrote. “Justices of the peace and judges similarly retain religious freedoms, and may claim that the government cannot force them to conduct same-sex wedding ceremonies over their religious objections.”
