Editor’s Note: The story has been updated to include a response from Judge Marlene Gonzalez to ABC-7’s inquiry regarding redaction vs. sealing of records.
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The divorce case of current City Representative and mayoral candidate Cassandra Hernandez may be closed, but it raised questions of transparency and resulted in her endorsement of the judge’s challenger.
In less than a month, the case filed by Hernandez’s husband, Jeremy Jordan, went from being public, to disappearing completely from the public court system, with questions being bounced through at least three departments at the courthouse, to being public again, and finally, withdrawn.
Presiding judge Marlene Gonzalez, who is running for re-election in the 388th District Court race, told ABC-7 in a statement, “the case drew an exorbitant amount of public interest and inquiry, so the record was unsealed.”
That move led to Hernandez’s rebuke of Judge Gonzalez as someone who “has demonstrated to my family that her politics are more important than the privacy of her constituents,” according to a post on Hernandez’s mayoral campaign Facebook page.