Supreme Court of Texas Update: State v. Naylor

Supreme Court of Texas

State v. Naylor

No. 11-0114, No. 11-0222

Case Summary written by Pedro Leyva, Staff Member.

JUSTICE BROWN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT, JUSTICE GREEN, JUSTICE JOHNSON, and JUSTICE BOYD joined.

Angelique Naylor and Sabina Daly were married in Massachusetts in 2004. A few years later Naylor filed for divorce in Travis County. The two women were operating a business and raising a child together. At the time of the Court’s decision, Texas did not recognize same-sex marriages.

The trial court orally granted an ostensible divorce. It recognized that divorce may not be available to same-sex couples in Texas so the record stipulated that the judgment “[was] intended to be a substitute for . . . a valid and subsisting divorce,” and “[was] intended to dispose of all economic issues and liabilities as between the parties whether they divorced or not.”

The day following the judgment, the state filed a petition seeking to limit the divorce actions to persons of the opposite sex who are married to one another. The state also raised a plea to the jurisdiction urging the court to dismiss Naylor’s petition. The state argued that the court lacked jurisdiction to render a divorce, but could declare the marriage void under Chapter 6 of the Family Code.

Both Daly and Naylor objected to the state’s intervention alleging it had filed its petition late. Naylor also argued that Texas law is unconstitutional to the extent it withholds the remedy of divorce. The trial court held a hearing on the contested intervention but decided that the attempted intervention had come too late and therefore did not rule on the motion.

The court of appeals dismissed the state’s appeal for want of jurisdiction. It held the intervention untimely and found no basis for appellate standing.

Issue: Did the state have standing in order to appeal the trial court’s decision in granting an ostensible divorce?

The Supreme Court of Texas agreed with the court of appeals that the state lacked standing to appeal the trial court’s decision. The State raised three arguments regarding its right to appeal the disputed divorce decree:

  1. At the trial court, the state argued it had timely intervened and so it was a party to the case.
  2. At the appellate level, the state alleged standing both as a timely intervenor and under the virtual-representation doctrine.
  3. At the Supreme Court Texas, the state contended that various equitable considerations also provide a basis for appellate standing.

With regard to the first argument, the Court held that a party that intervenes after the judgment is too late unless the judgment has been set aside. In this case, the Supreme Court held that the oral announcement of the divorce by the trial court judge served as a binding judgment. Therefore, the state was not a party to the case that could appeal the final judgment.

The state’s next argument was that it was deemed to be a party under the doctrine of virtual representation. This doctrine serves as an exception to the rule that only parties of record may file an appeal. This doctrine requires that the appellant establish: (1) it is bound by the judgment; (2) its privity of estate, title, or interest appears from the record; and (3) there is an identity of interest between the appellant and a party to the judgment. The Court found that the state was not bound in any way by this judgment because it in no way affected the state and that the state had not established identity of interest because none of the parties were advocating on behalf of the state.

The state then asked the Court to find an equitable basis for appellate standing in light of the importance of the issues before the Court. The Court found that the state identified no equitable doctrine that might allow for standing and cited no precedent in which the Court allowed a third party to appeal without first satisfying the elements of the doctrine of virtual representation. The Court emphasized that Texas courts “allow post-judgment intervention only upon careful consideration of any prejudice the intervenor might suffer if intervention is denied, any prejudice the existing parties will suffer as a consequence of untimely intervention, and any other circumstance that may militate either for or against the determination.” Therefore, even before the Court could have decided whether to grant the intervention or not, the state needed to have established standing to present its argument on appeal, which it failed to do.

The Supreme Court of Texas further stated that even if the state had standing to entertain its petition, it found no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s decision not to consider the untimely petition. The Court also found that the state had multiple opportunities to intervene which would have required little effort, but chose not to do so until after the judgment was rendered. The state could have asked the trial court to set the judgment aside, but it did not do so. The state’s only argument was that the trial court lacked jurisdiction over the petition.

The state also sought mandamus relief from the trial court’s adjudication of the divorce petition. In order for a non-party to raise a mandamus challenge it must have a “justiciable interest” in the judgment. The Court did not decide whether or not the state had a justiciable interest because it held that the state’s petition failed on the merits. The state filed the petition for a writ of mandamus directly with the Supreme Court of Texas without first presenting it to the court of appeals. While this is an option, the petition must include a compelling reason why the petition was not first presented to the court of appeals. The Court held that the state thinking it had standing and the fact that presenting the writ to the court of appeals would have been futile were not compelling reasons, and therefore, the petition failed.

The Court refused to decide the constitutional issues raised by the state because the state did not have standing and neither the trial court nor the court of appeals addressed the merits of the constitutional issues raised.

JUSTICE BOYD, concurring.

Justice Boyd’s concurrence emphasized the fact that the state of Texas is not bound by the divorce decree rendered by the trial court. The State’s arguments were simply not decided because it lacked standing in the case. If the State would have had standing, it is possible that Naylor and Daly are neither married nor divorced. The concurrence also talked about how courts cannot rely on equity to create standing for the state on appeal.

JUSTICE WILLETT, joined by JUSTICE GUZMAN and JUSTICE DEVINE, dissenting.

Justice Willett’s dissent took a different approach to how equity can create standing for the state. In his view, equities should be balanced differently than the majority balanced them and he would “allow the [A]ttorney [G]eneral to make his argument that Texas law imposes an absolute jurisdictional constraint and constitutionally prohibits a judge not only from performing a same-sex marriage but also from dissolving one.” The dissent also argued that the state of Texas has an inherently justiciable interest in defending the constitutionality of its laws and the Attorney General should have been allowed to intervene to defend Texas law against perceived constitutional attack.

JUSTICE DEVINE, dissenting.

In his dissent Justice Devine argued that the traditional concept of marriage, heterosexual marriages, does not violate the United States Constitution. The dissent also concluded that the trial court was prohibited by state law from granting a divorce decree and could have only declared the marriage void or dismissed the case. The dissent argued that there is no fundamental right to marriage and therefore rational basis review should be applied to Texas marriage laws.

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