Remember the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to LGBTQ+ couples in 2015? It’s taken almost 10 years, but Kim Davis is finally getting her karma. She is currently facing $360,000 in damages and attorney fees. (Would have been a lot cheaper to just not be a homophobe!)
In September, Davis was ordered to pay $100,000 in damages to one of the couples to denied a license to, and yesterday, was ordered to pay an additional $260,104 to David Ermold and David Moore to cover their attorney fees, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
After the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015, gay marriage was legalized, but Davis still refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, claiming that doing so violated her religious beliefs. She then closed all marriage license operations in her office to avoid serving gay couples, and then was briefly detained for her illegal actions.
In 2022, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning decided that Davis violated a gay couple’s (Ermold and Moore) constitutional rights. He wrote in his decision at the time that Davis could “not use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”
Davis learned the hard way to not to mess with the gays. Ermold and Moore didn’t stop after being awarded damages– they then sought for Davis to cover their legal expenses. Davis’ attorneys argued that the fees would be excessive, but Bunning dismissed them. Davis is expected to appeal the $260,104 charge.
In September, Ermold told jurors that he worried for his wellbeing during the case because of the media frenzy surrounding it.
“I have a lot of stress and anxiety because of what happened,” he said, according to the Herald-Leader. “Ms. Davis is responsible for humiliating us in public.”
