Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not reconsider its landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, rejecting a bid by former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to overturn the decision.
Davis, who served as the Rowan County clerk, drew national attention when she stopped issuing marriage licenses to gay and straight couples in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that the 14th Amendment guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry.
Soon after the ruling, then-Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear sent a letter to all Kentucky county clerks directing them to immediately license and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples. But Davis had said that affixing her name to marriage licenses for gay couples would violate her sincerely held religious belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.
Kentucky later enacted a law that removed clerks’ names and signatures from its marriage licenses. But until then, Davis and her deputies denied marriage licenses to several same-sex couples, including David Moore and David Ermold.
The pair sought a marriage license from the Rowan County Clerk’s Office 10 days after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. But Davis refused to issue one, instead telling them she was acting “under God’s authority” and advising them to go to another county for a marriage license.
Moore and Ermold sued several days later, alleging that Davis violated their constitutional right to marry. They continued to return to the Rowan County Clerk’s Office and were repeatedly denied a marriage license by Davis and her deputies. Moore and Ermold eventually secured a marriage license from a Rowan County deputy clerk in September 2015, when Davis was jailed for five days for refusing to issue marriage licenses in defiance of a court order.
Still, the couple pursued monetary damages as a result of Davis’ actions, and a jury awarded them $50,000 apiece.
Davis appealed the decision, arguing that because issuing Moore and Ermold a marriage license would have violated her constitutionally protected religious beliefs, she cannot be held liable. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit disagreed, and ruled that the First Amendment does not shield Davis from liability because she was acting in her capacity as a government official.
Ty Wright / Getty Images
“In their ‘private lives,’ government officials are of course free to express their views and live according to their faith. But when an official wields state power against private citizens, her conscience must yield to the Constitution,” Judge Helene White wrote for the court.
The 6th Circuit warned that if it were to accept Davis’ argument, county clerks who find interracial marriage sinful could refuse to issue licenses to interracial couples, or a zoning official opposed to Christianity could deny a permit for construction of a church.
“[W]hen an official’s discharge of her duties according to her conscience violates the constitutional rights of citizens, the Constitution must win out,” White wrote. “The Bill of Rights would serve little purpose if it could be freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates.”
Davis appealed to the Supreme Court. In addition to asking the justices to review the 6th Circuit’s ruling, her lawyers asked them to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
Her petition raised concerns that the 10-year-old decision could be at risk, particularly given the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the high court reconsider a number of its decisions based on the principle of substantive due process, including the right to same-sex marriage and contraception.
No other justice joined Thomas’ opinion, and it was unclear whether four of the justices agreed that Obergefell should be reconsidered, and five would vote to overturn it.
