KY clerk who denied marriage licenses to gay couples wants Supreme Court ruling overturned
Former Rowan County clerk Kim Davis is arguing in federal appeals court that the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage should be overturned, and she should not have to pay a judgment to one of the couples she denied a marriage license.
In April, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning declined to set aside a jury verdict against Davis in which she was ordered to pay $100,000 to two of the men to whom she would not issue a marriage license in 2015. That meant that Davis was also on the hook for the men’s attorney fees in the case, which totaled more than $260,000.
Davis’ attorneys said at the time they planned to appeal.
In the opening brief filed Monday in the US. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, attorneys with the Liberty Counsel who are representing Davis argue the lower court should not have even allowed the jury to get the case. That’s because the plaintiffs, David Ermold and David Moore, didn’t provide enough evidence that they were actually harmed by Davis failing to give them the license, they said.
They also argue the lower court was wrong when it determined that “Davis was not entitled to a reasonable accommodation for her sincerely held religious beliefs under the First Amendment and Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
And they say the lower court “erred by finding that Obergefell (the 2015 Supreme Court ruling securing the right to same-sex marriage) created a clearly established constitutional right that superseded Davis’s preexisting fundamental, textual constitutional rights to religious exercise.”
“Davis sought refuge in the textual protection of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause for an accommodation of her sincerely held religious beliefs, but Obergefell was wielded to land her in a jail cell— and now subject her to a debilitating money judgment—for seeking protection in the Constitution’s plain text,” the brief states.
Davis is an evangelical Christian who claimed it would violate her religious beliefs and rights to issue the men a marriage license bearing her name. Licenses were later issued to same-sex couples in Davis’ office by a deputy clerk, and the Kentucky legislature later changed the marriage license form so that the clerk’s name is not on it.
“To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” Davis said in a statement posted on the Liberty Counsel’s website.
“It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven-or-Hell decision. For me, it is a decision of obedience.”
Davis lost her bid for reelection in 2018.
Several couples filed suit against Davis, and the cases have been making their way through the court system for years. A different jury ruled Davis did not have to pay one of the other couples who was denied a license.
Davis’ attorneys hope to get the case before the Supreme Court, where they say they will argue that the decision granting same-sex couples the right to marry should be overturned because, according to the brief, “the right to same-sex marriage is neither carefully described nor deeply rooted in the nation’s history.”
“Kim Davis deserves justice in this case since she was entitled to religious accommodation from issuing marriage licenses under her name and authority,” Mat Staver, one of the attorneys representing Davis and the founder of Liberty Counsel, said in a statement posted on the organization’s website.
“This case has the potential to overturn the wrongly decided Obergefell v. Hodges and extend the same religious freedom protections beyond Kentucky to the entire nation.”
Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, responded Tuesday night: “It is sad and desperate that the Liberty Counsel is looking to fund raise off Kim Davis, who is Kentucky’s decade-old news. The threat of anti-LGBTQ hate groups like the Liberty Counsel is real, however, and it comes as no surprise that they are seeking to overturn LGBTQ marriage in America. With an arch-conservative Supreme Court that’s already upended half a century of abortion rights, anything is unfortunately possible.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
