Judges uphold verdict against former KY official who refused same-sex marriage licenses
Federal appeals judges have upheld a decision under which a Kentucky official who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples owes one couple $100,000.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a request by Kim Davis to strike down the judgment.
A panel of the appeals court issued the decision Thursday.
Davis gained international attention in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the U.S. Supreme Court said in a landmark ruling that same-sex couple have a Constitutional right to marry.
Davis was county clerk in Rowan County at the time, an office she lost in a later election. That office issues marriage licenses in Kentucky.
Davis, an evangelical Christian, said she believed that marriage is only legitimate between a man and a woman and claimed that issuing a marriage license under her name to a same-sex couple would violate her religious beliefs and rights.
A clerk in her office later issued licenses to gay couples, and the Kentucky legislature ultimately changed the state marriage form so it doesn’t display the name of the county clerk.
However, several gay couples sued Davis for refusing to issue licenses to them, arguing she subjected them to public embarrassment and emotional distress.
In one of those cases, a jury in federal court awarded $50,000 each to David Ermold and David Moore, one of the couples Davis turned away when they sought a license.
In addition, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning ordered Davis to pay lawyers for the two men a total of $260,104 in fees and expenses as a result of the verdict in their favor.
Attorneys for Davis asked the appeals court to set side the verdict.
Their arguments included that Davis was entitled to immunity as a public official; that her right to religious freedom under the First Amendment shielded her from liability; and that Ermold and Moore did not provide sufficient evidence of emotional distress caused by Davis to justify the decision in their favor.
The appeals panel turned aside each of the arguments.
The judges noted that the appeals court had turned aside Davis’ immunity claim in earlier rulings, and ruled that Ermold and Moore presented sufficient evidence of the harm Davis caused them.
In turning the two down for a marriage license, Davis at one point implied that they were “inferior to murderers and rapists,” the judges said Wednesday.
“Given the sense of stigma and powerlessness Davis’s actions caused, a reasonable jury could find that ‘a reasonable person in the same situation’ “ as Ermold and Moore “would suffer emotional distress,” the judges said.
The judges also turned aside Davis’ argument on religious freedom.
The First Amendment shields Davis as a private citizen, but when she acted as a public official, it didn’t allow her to violate the rights of others, the majority opinion said.
Davis’ point of view is that “a public official can wield the authority of the state to violate the constitutional rights of citizens if the official believes she is ‘follow[ing] her conscience,’“ but that can’t be correct, the appeals panel said.
The judges said in the ruling that “when an official’s discharge of her duties according to her conscience violates the constitutional rights of citizens, the Constitution must win out.”
“The Bill of Rights would serve little purpose if it could be freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates,” the ruling said.
The ruling said it wasn’t hard to imagine the “dire possibilities” if Davis’ argument won out.
An election official who believes women shouldn’t vote could refuse to count ballots from women, for instance, or a zoning official opposed to Christianity could refuse to issue a permit to build a church, the ruling said.
“All these officials would have wielded state power to violate constitutional rights — but they would have followed their conscience . . . ,” the ruling said.
Davis could ask the full 6th Circuit to reconsider the decision, and if that fails is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorneys for Liberty Counsel, a Christian organization, who represent Davis hope to use her case to overturn the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
Lexington attorneys Michael J. Gartland and Joseph D. Buckles represented Ermold and Moore in the appeal, along with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 3:07 PM.
