Panel to rule if S.A. judge can let her gay pride colors fly in court – San Antonio Express-News
AUSTIN — The grilling of a witness by a lawyer in the state’s highest civil courtroom was polite but heavy on legal hair-splitting — and it was a judge from San Antonio in the hot seat.
The case: what is the difference between government speech and free speech? It pitted the sometimes secretive commission that oversees the Texas judiciary against Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, who was trying to get out from under the panel’s discipline.
Bexar County’s first openly gay Latina elected to a bench argued that her right to display a rainbow Pride Flag in her courtroom was protected by the First Amendment. Testimony at the special trial to decide her appeal took hours and a ruling might not come for months.
It was on the wall with the Texas and U.S. flags for about 10 months after she took office in 2019, but she took it down and moved it into her chambers after a complaint about it resulted in a private warning by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
The complaint was filed by a lawyer who found it offensive and sought to move all his cases from Bexar County Court-at-Law No. 13, where Speedlin Gonzalez presides. It is one of the county’s two misdemeanor courts that focus on family violence cases.
Arguing before a three-judge panel assembled by the commission in the Texas Supreme Court’s courtroom, Speedlin Gonzalez said the flag is not a political statement, but a symbol of inclusiveness, self-acceptance, unity and pride for a community that she says has been long oppressed and made to feel separate from everyone else.
“That flag is a flag that symbolizes equality,” she said under direct questioning by attorney Phil Robertson, the commission’s lawyer.
Robertson argued that the flag created the appearance of a partisan bias.
Speedlin Gonzalez also is appealing a separate, public admonition issued by the commission for her social media posts congratulating lawyers after they won jury verdicts in her court.
Speedlin Gonzalez said a training session for new judges she attended after her election encouraged them to commend good work, but she stopped the kudos after being admonished.
The special court of review consisted of Bill Pedersen III and Bonnie Lee Goldstein, both justices on the state’s Fifth Court of Appeals; and J. Wade Birdwell, justice of the Second Court of Appeals.
Their eventual decision on the flag dispute could set a precedent, “not only in Texas, but across the nation,” said Deanna Whitley, who is representing her.
“The panel sees this as an important decision of significance,” Whitley said after the hearing. “As a judge and member of the LGBTQ community, upon election, she does not lose her rights. She has to balance them.”
From the moment she took the oath Jan. 1, 2019, and moved into her chambers, she gave it her own touch, hanging artwork and displaying symbols that reflect not only her cultural heritage, but also her identity as a gay woman.
The decor spilled into her courtroom and included adornments on her judicial robe. The rainbow flag was a gift from Orgullo de San Antonio, the local LGBTQ council of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Orgullo is the Spanish word for pride.
It was a little shorter than the Texas and American colors and some distance away, but all three were just behind the judge’s bench. Speedlin Gonzalez had unsuccessfully argued before the commission in February 2020 that it’s not a political symbol.
“We have, in our country and across the state, numerous — I couldn’t even state to count them — children’s courts and family courts with rainbows all over their courtrooms,” she said in her testimony then. “But I was directed to take, not only my flag down, but my rainbow frame glasses off, my multicolored pen off the bench, my rainbow flag mousepad off the bench.”
Speedlin Gonzalez also has stopped wearing a robe with a colorful design taken from a Mexican zarape, which was given to her by her mother-in-law, Phylis J. Speedlin, a former jurist on the Fourth Court of Appeals. She has stopped wearing a pin that recognizes the International Association of LGBTQ Judges.
The flag became an issue after local defense attorney Flavio Hernandez filed a motion to recuse Speedlin Gonzalez from presiding over his cases because of it. He also filed the complaint with the commission,
It was an anonymous complaint, but he has acknowledged being its author and told Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia in a written statement in April 2020, “I may not be able to turn the dark tide of immorality sweeping through our nation like a virus, but in my small way, I voiced my support of traditional American family values.”
Testimony established that Speedlin Gonzalez is not the only judge in Bexar County who wears distinctive robes. County Court-at-Law No. 2 Judge Wayne Christian, who presides over Veterans Treatment Court, wears a camouflage robe. Criminal Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers’s gown has an African daishiki design on the shoulders.
And at least one other judge routinely wears a San Antonio Spurs pin, Speedlin Gonzalez pointed out. None of them have been ordered by the commission to stick to basic black gowns and ditch the decorations — and none of them should be, she said.
Speedlin Gonzalez is up for re-election this year and faces Republican Charles E. Gold in November.
ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863