Ruben Gallego at an Aug. 9, 2024, campaign rally for Kamala Harris in Glendale. Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego asked the Arizona Supreme Court to extend a stay on the release of their divorce records in their latest attempt to fend off a legal fight with an out-of-state conservative news outlet.
The existing stay is set to expire Thursday.
The Gallegos, both Democrats, have accused the Washington Free Beacon, which sued to unseal the records back in January, of doing so with political motivations.
Both Gallegos are current elected officials and candidates for office in the November election. Ruben is running for a U.S. Senate seat and Kate is running for reelection as Phoenix mayor.
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“The privacy and safety interests of the Gallegos’ minor child continue to justify sealing any reference to him in the record, especially when the Gallegos presented unrebutted evidence of the threats they and their minor child faced,” Daniel Arellano, attorney for both Gallegos, wrote in a motion filed Tuesday to the Arizona Supreme Court.
In an opinion column, the editors of the Washington Free Beacon wrote that they filed the suit in January because Ruben Gallego had been speaking about his divorce publicly, and that the public deserved to be able to fact check him.
Ruben and Kate were married in 2010, and in 2014, Ruben was elected to represent the 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House. The two began divorce proceedings in December 2016 and their son was born in January 2017.
In Arizona, it’s not common for divorce records to be sealed, but at the Gallegos’ request, in 2016 Yavapai County Superior Court, where the divorce took place, sealed the records in their entirety after finding that “the privacy interests of the parties outweighs the general open records policy.”
Following the Beacon’s lawsuit, the Gallegos — who have endorsed one another in runs for office since their divorce was finalized in 2017 — proposed that the court release a redacted version of their divorce records, to protect financial information as well as details about their minor child.
The court agreed to some, but not all of those redactions. The Gallegos appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the decision of the lower court on Oct. 10.
“The Gallegos appealed to protect their minor child, who is referenced extensively in the divorce record,” Arellano wrote. “The record includes intimate details of how the Gallegos planned to raise and co-parent their child.”
Arellano argued that even though the Gallegos have 30 days from the Oct. 10 decision to file another appeal, the damage they are seeking to avoid will already be done if the records are unsealed Thursday. So, the Gallegos asked the Arizona Supreme Court to extend the stay while they work on another appeal.
“Without an order from this Court before October 17 further staying the Superior Court’s decision while the Gallegos seek review, the sealed record in this case will become public, thereby irreparably harming the privacy and safety rights they have sought to preserve for themselves and their minor child and mooting their petition for review,” Arellano wrote.
He went on to point out that once the records are unsealed, “that bell cannot be unrung” and the information will be available to the public going forward, no matter what the courts decide in the future.
“The Gallegos have stridently maintained that their overriding interest in privacy and safety does not disappear simply because of their jobs as elected officials,” Arellano wrote.
He argued that the “balance of hardships” favored the Gallegos since the Washington Free Beacon would not be harmed by the delayed release of the records.
“They remain free to criticize the Gallegos as much as they would like, and the Gallegos should not be denied a stay solely because the Free Beacon would prefer to publish the details of the records before the upcoming general election,” Arellano wrote.
Gallego told the Washington Post in March 2023 that post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by his time as a Marine deployed to Iraq in 2005, was a contributing factor in his divorce. He told the Post that he drank and smoked too much and had “extreme outbursts” as he attempted to cope with the deaths of the 22 Marines in his company who were killed while he was deployed.
Ruben’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, Kari Lake, has repeatedly denied any involvement with the Beacon’s effort to unseal the divorce records, but she often mentions the circumstances surrounding his divorce when criticizing him during campaign events.
“Arizona deserves to know what he’s hiding,” Lake wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
Early voting began in Arizona on Oct. 9.
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