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 within 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 temporary “out of time.”
In June 2015, the nation’s high court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that states couldn’t 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 topic of litigation by a same-sex couple that she had refused to present 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 3-judge panel of the sixth 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 helps to represent Davis, said in a press release Monday that the Supreme Court “has let stand a call to strip a government defendant of their immunity and any personal First Amendment defense for his or her religious expression.”
“This can’t be right because government officials don’t shed their constitutional rights upon election,” Staver said. “Like the abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, Obergefell was egregiously mistaken from the beginning. This opinion has no basis within the Constitution. We will proceed to work to overturn Obergefell. It is just 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 laws that then-President Joe Biden signed into law.
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