WEDDING DAY | A firefighter Thomas Araguz III and Nikki Araguz were married in 2008. After Thomas was killed in the line of duty last year, his family and ex-wife went to court to keep Nikki from getting his benefits, saying the marriage was invalid because Nikki was born a male.
Trans widow hires law firm involved with Lawrence v. Texas to appeal ruling denying her access to death benefits from her husband
JOHN WRIGHT | Online Editor
wright@dallasvoice.com
HOUSTON — Transgender widow Nikki Araguz this week announced a new legal team and vowed to appeal a judge’s ruling denying her death benefits all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
Araguz said the Houston firm of Katine & Nechman, which served as local counsel in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case that led to a Supreme Court ruling overturning Texas’ sodomy law, will represent her on appeal.
In late May, State District Judge Randy Clapp of Wharton County issued a two-page ruling saying Araguz isn’t entitled to death benefits from her husband Thomas Araguz III, a volunteer firefighter who was killed in the line of duty last year.
Clapp granted summary judgment to Thomas Araguz’s family, which filed a lawsuit alleging that the couple’s 2008 marriage is void because Nikki Araguz was born a man, and Texas prohibits same-sex marriage.
Nikki Araguz, who until now has been represented by Frye & Associations, said she expects Katine & Nechman will partner with national LGBT advocacy groups on the appeal.
Araguz said she chose to switch law firms because the high-profile case could have broad implications for transgender equality, possibly addressing fundamental legal questions about how gender is determined.
“I think that collaborating with multiple national organizations’ legal teams, and the Supreme Court experience of Mitchell Katine, is the better way to go for the greater good of everyone who’s going to be affected by the outcome of this case,” Araguz said this week in an interview with Dallas Voice.
Phyllis Frye, the well-known transgender attorney who heads Frye & Associates, didn’t respond to a phone message seeking comment.
A representative from Katine & Nechman confirmed that the firm is likely to take the case but said any further comment would have to come from partner Mitchell Katine, who couldn’t immediately be reached.
Ken Upton, a Dallas-based senior staff attorney for the national LGBT civil rights group Lambda Legal, agreed that Araguz’s case could be an important one for the transgender community.
Upton said he believes Clapp should have at least granted Araguz a trial.
“If they’ve got any evidence at all, the rule is they should get to go to trial and prove their case,” Upton said. “The judge really gave her short shrift.”
In their motion for summary judgment, Thomas Araguz’s family cited a San Antonio appellate court’s 1999 ruling in Littleton v. Prange, which found that sex is determined at birth and cannot be changed.
Araguz’s attorneys, meanwhile, argued that the Littleton decision is unconstitutional and isn’t binding on courts in other parts of Texas. They also noted that in 2009 the Legislature added a court order of sex change to the list of documents that can be used to obtain marriage licenses in Texas — effectively overturning the Littleton decision.
South Texas College of Law professor James W. Paulsen, a Harvard-educated expert in family and marriage law, submitted a written affidavit in which he argued that even if the Araguzes’ marriage was void when it was celebrated in 2008, it became valid when the 2009 law took effect.
“Proper resolution of this case does not require this court to take a position on transsexual marriage,” Paulsen wrote. “Nor would such a determination be proper. The issue has been determined by the Texas Legislature.”
Also submitting a written affidavit was Collier Cole, a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who specializes in the treatment of gender dysphoria. Cole said Araguz, now 36, began hormone therapy at 18 and, according to medical standards, completed her transition sometime in the late 1990s, even though she didn’t have surgery until 2008. Cole concluded that, “I regard her [Araguz] medically and psychologically as female.”
But Judge Clapp chose not to address any of these arguments in his order granting summary judgment. Araguz, who has a Texas driver’s license and a California birth certificate indicating that she is female, said she was born with a birth defect.
“The doctors misidentified me at birth as male, and as I grew up, I developed into a female, and by 13 I had already developed breasts,” Araguz said. “It was not until much later that I was able to medically take care of it.
“It’s a birth defect like an extra toe or an extra finger,” she said. “If you had the option to have it removed, you would.”
It would seem, to me, that if the State of Texas allowed marriage to take place, with all the necessary ramifications, like licenses and blood tests, then it also should allow compensation according to the law. While it is true that same-sex marriage is forbidden in this state, it does not allow it to take place, therefore it does not issue a marriage license.
This is disgusting. Our politicians are so crooked now they want to stick their noses into our bedrooms. They run around the sticking their nose in everybody else’s business. Killing our young men and we set on our ass and take it. Get Real folks, what are you going to do when they come into your bedroom and tell you which side of the bed to sleep on.
I agree with Mr Thompson. I cant even get a marraige license to marry my partner for that very reason. If they issue a license how can it be and where do they get off ruling that she doesnt deserve or isnt entitled to her husbands pension. If that was considered a same sex marraige then they would never have issued the license. Are these people so stupid as to think they can walk all over what few rights people of alternative lifestyles have and we will just take it? Please!!! I am proud to see someone standing up a fighting for the equality that so rightly deserve.
You have not been deprived of the law’s equal protection, nor of the right to marry — only of the right to insist that a single-sex union is a “marriage.” You cloak their demands in the language of civil rights because it sounds so much… better than the truth: You don’t want to accept or reject marriage on the same terms that it is available to everyone else. You want it on entirely new terms. You want it to be given a meaning it has never before had, and You prefer that it be done undemocratically — by judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn’t civil rights.
Go ahead and delete this comment when you see fit because I know how you “equal rights” people really are, you dont want anyone that opposes your perverted agenda saying anything against your lifestyle choice…so much for equality huh? Nikki, you were Born a man, therefore you have no right to the money that a wife should get because you are not a woman. by law, you are a man!
“Perverted Agenda” you just made my Sunday 20x better. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time. “You people” includes the coloreds (or nigras as you might call them) and the wetbacks too I hope. I’m only a woman so my opinion doesn’t mean much. I mean heck, they just gave us the vote. But I think you should start an alternate news source. You might title it “1918-Bringin’ It Back!”
Please don’t delete the comment above by Human Rights?. The comment’s contents are a great reminder to everyone that a lack of education results to negative thinking.
the problem is that her other attorneys dropped her because nikki is a proven liar, thief and drug user…. I wish a better representative from the trans community would have been involved but maybe she will get her act together…. seeing as how she drugged a lady and stole her Rolex watch in February she prolly won’t though sad..:(
I think the only way they would have given the widow a license is not because the marriage was legal but because maybe the widow put down she was a woman…when biologicaly she is not. Therefore yeah its not vaild. On the other hand…if her husband knew about her and was there for her and wanted to really protect her why didn’t they have a will stating what she was to receive or what was expected of his estate?
The really sad thing with all of this is that we live in a society that recognizes marriage between a man and a woman. But, times are changing. Some states allow a man to be wedded to another man or a woman to be with a woman.
To answer Elisha, why the husband did not provide for his wife, Nikki Araguz, one can only imagine that he was not planning to die so soon. The biggest question here is does the state of Texas accept Nikki Araguz as a woman or as a man. When she was born, according to her own testimony, “The doctors misidentified me at birth as male, and as I grew up, I developed into a female, and by 13 I had already developed breasts,” Studies prove that we have both sex organs, but what predominates is what we become by our chromosomes.
If we had equal rights we could marry and file a federal tax return and partake of the same exemptions as married straight couples but we cant. So no we dont have equal rights where this is concerned. We can marry our lovers and live our lives and never been seen as equals to a straight couple which sucks and is sad.
Most Republicans don’t believe gays (or transexuals) should be allowed to get married. Some Democrats believe they should be allowed to get married.
But what do both R’s and D’s have in common in this issue? They both believe marriage between consenting adults should require permission from the government, who is not a contractual partner in the marriage. Idiots.
As a firefighter, i realize there were a lot of problems that could have been easily prevented with this fire. As a human being, I am sickened that survivors benifits are even being questioned over whether the widow was a man or woman or something in between. Who cares??? Seriously–who cares? This was these peoples business. While we are entitled to our various opinions, we are not entitled to infringe on their rights as individuals. Period. Easy to understand.
Going off what Colorado fire fighter said, I have to take issue with one point: The state DOES HAVE a right and responsibility to grant marriage. Marriage confers upon the couple government-given rights that they wouldn’t ordinarily have, from wills, successions, tax rules,etc.
The real issue is with the word “marriage.” The word “marriage” is a religious term, which is why religious groups get so bent out of shape about it. Churches can choose to marry — or not marry — whomever they choose. Marriage, as a religious sacrament, is a covenant before their God.
However, the state should treat all unions as civil unions — man and woman, man and man, woman and woman. The state has somehow taken a religious rite and made it into a legal issue. If the government simply took the phrase out of the equation, you’d see all the problems disappear. People could get married by whomever they want, but the paperwork at the courthouse to get the benefits would be uniform civil union paperwork.