Kim Davis spent five days in prison for refusing to issue a marriage licence to a same-sex couple. (Photo: Liberty Counsel)
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition filed by former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to reconsider the 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
In an orders list released Monday morning, the high court denied without comment a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Kim Davis v. David Ermold, et al.
Additionally, the Supreme Court denied a motion from the Alabama-based conservative group Foundation for Moral Law to file a friend-of-the-court brief “out of time.”
In June 2015, the nation’s high court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that states could not ban same-sex marriage, concluding that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protected the unions.
Shortly after the ruling was issued, Davis garnered national attention when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples while serving as a clerk in Rowan County.
Davis served several days in jail after being held in contempt of court for her refusal to issue the licenses. She was also eventually the subject of litigation by a same-sex couple that she had refused to give a license to.
In late December 2023, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning of the Eastern District of Kentucky issued a memorandum opinion and order requiring Davis to pay $260,000 in attorneys’ fees and other expenses over her actions in 2015.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower decision in March, prompting Davis to file an appeal with the Supreme Court in July.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver, whose organization is helping to represent Davis, said in a statement Monday that the Supreme Court “has let stand a decision to strip a government defendant of their immunity and any personal First Amendment defense for their religious expression.”
“This cannot be right because government officials do not shed their constitutional rights upon election,” Staver said. “Like the abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, Obergefell was egregiously wrong from the start. This opinion has no basis in the Constitution. We will continue to work to overturn Obergefell. It is not a matter of if, but when the Supreme Court will overturn Obergefell.”
In 2022, the Obergefell ruling was federally codified when a Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress passed legislation that then-President Joe Biden signed into law.
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