From the Fifth Circuit.
Plaintiff, a state-court judge, challenged a state judicial-ethics canon he believed prohibited him from declining to perform same-sex marriages. The trial court abstain because the same question would be resolved a pending state-court litigation; the Fifth Circuit rejected abstention out of doubts the current litigation would resolve the issue, but nevertheless certified the open question to the Texas Supreme Court.
The Pullman analysis is bizarre, although it is common in some lower-courts: Abstaining in A's federal lawsuit in deference to pending state litigation on the same state-law issue involving B; the theory is that the decision on the state issue in B's case will resolve the state issue and thus help the federal court decide A's case. Pullman is supposed to be about avoiding a federal decision altogether by requiring A to pursue his own state-court litigation and come back only if the federal issue remains alive. Nevertheless, the decision to certify puts us in the same basic position--a state court will decide the scope of state law, which may obviate the constitutional challenge.
