Clerk Who Refused To Issue Marriage License To Gay Couples Now Asks SCOTUS To Overturn Landmark Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Featured image: Sept. 8, 2015: Kim Davis waves to supporters at a rally in front of Detention Center (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)

In 2015, citing “God’s authority“, Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in defiance of SCOTUS’ ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. Married at least three times herself (by some accounts, four), the former Kentucky County Clerk was put behind bars in contempt of court after refusing to follow a federal judge’s order. Six days later, she emerged from the jail to the unauthorized use of the song, “Eye of the Tiger”. The self-described devout Christian was met with cheers and a sea of white crosses waved in her honor.

“How ironic that God would use a person like me, who failed so miserably at marriage in the world, to defend it now,” Davis said then. “The Lord picks the unlikely source to convey the message.” 

Now, a decade later, Davis still fancies herself a messenger and is seeking stone cold retribution. With the help of evangelical-based Liberty Counsel, a Southern Poverty Law Center designated anti-LGBT hate group, she has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case. Davis is appealing the $100,000 jury verdict for “emotional damages” incurred after being ordered to pay the couple whose rights she had violated, plus $260,000 for attorneys fees. And to live up to her reputation as being everyone’s nightmare (everyone being anyone who understands the concept of liberty for all), Kim Davis is asking the justices to throw out the milestone ruling that gave same-sex couples the legal right to wed. 

It’s been ten years since that momentous day when marriage rights were extended to same-sex couples across the United States. A hardwon victory that many thought not possible. The latest development marks the first time that the high court has been formally asked to reverse that milestone decision in Obergefell v Hodges. In the past, lower courts had dismissed the ex-clerk’s claims. Now the justices must weight whether to take up a case that could decimate marital equality.

In a Petition for Writ of Certiorari (legalese for the ask to review a case), Davis is filing against the couple who had sued her, David Moore and David Ermold. Her attorney asserts that the Court’s decision in Obergefell was grounded in “erroneous fiction” and that “the mistake must be corrected.” It goes on to say that Obergefell was “egregiously wrong”  and “deeply damaging.”

The petition reads like an ode of sympathy to Kim Davis. “Davis may have been one of the first victims of th[e] Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last.” Her lawyer contends that “This flawed opinion has produced disastrous results leaving individuals like Davis “find[ing] it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell.”

Of course many saw this day coming. It just wasn’t entirely clear who would carry the torch toward the next target after Roe v. Wade.

William Powell, Senior Counsel at Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, is representing Ermold and Moore. “We are confident the Supreme Court, like the court of appeals, will conclude that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention,” he has publicly stated. We certainly hope that the law is settled. Nonetheless we’re on high alert.

“It is abominable that we are having to revisit this, and that the Supreme Court would even hear this,” activist Robin Tyler shares with GO. “If they can reverse a civil right called ‘marriage’, they can reverse every civil right. Will Scotus go after interracial marriage next?” Tyler, along with the late Diane Olson were the first same-sex couple to sue the state of California for the right to marry, paving the way for innumerable others. When the Supreme Court heard the federal marriage case in 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges), Tyler and Olson were the first to be given tickets to attend. “This is a very dangerous time,” she adds. “We are not a passive community and if they go to reverse this civil right, they will clearly understand that.”