Garcia issued the order Wednesday in response to a request from a Conroe police officer who says the Texas Department of Health and Human Services refused to amend his spouse’s death certificate to reflect he was married.
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Half a year ago, John Allen Stone-Hoskins returned home to discover that his husband had hung himself, a tragedy that may have occurred after a medication that Stone-Hoskins’s husband James was taking triggered a psychotic episode. The state recoiled at recognizing John Stone-Hoskins as the surviving spouse on a death certificate for James Stone-Hoskins.
But Paxton first has to convince a federal judge not to hold him in contempt of court for failing to recognize same-sex marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Cynthia Meyer, a spokeswoman for Paxton’s office, said that whether the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling is retroactive “is a complex legal question that must be resolved in a separate case, and is a separate issue from what was addressed” in Garcia’s July order, which centered on the right to marry.
After the landmark Supreme Court ruling in June, Hoskins sent the state $46 and filled out the form to correct Box #8 on his husband’s death certificate to show James was legally married.
Attorneys for Paxton, 52, said he will plead not guilty to two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a lesser charge of failing to register with state securities regulators. The reasons are myriad: “I have a terminal liver disease, melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, breast disease, a heart defect, in addition to a defective aorta, which was not discovered until recently”, he says in court documents filed today.
John Stone-Hoskins turned to Garcia, the judge who in February 2014 ruled that the Texas ban on same-sex marriage violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal and fair treatment under the law.
John Stone-Hoskins repeatedly asked the state to include him on the death certificate and was denied, he said at a press conference Wednesday announcing the lawsuit.
His attorney, Neel Lane, said Wednesday that the portion of the death certificate identifying a spouse was left blank, arguing, “That blank spot erases everything that represents their marriage together”. This is what prompted the judge’s order. His agency is responsible for handling death certificates.
The two were not immediately available for comment.
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“I think it’s heartless”, Lane said. If the state does not stop resisting its constitutional obligation soon, John will die without ever having his rights vindicated in life.
