A Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples wants the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark ruling establishing marriage equality as law.
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Kim Davis, who in 2015 spent five days in jail rather than recognize the rights of LGBTQ+ couples to wed, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to consider an ongoing appeal of court-ordered damages.
Related: A majority of LGBTQ+ singles want to get married, especially those who grew up with marriage equality
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ+ Liberty Counsel, Davis filed a 90-page petition to the highest court in the land that she shouldn’t have to pay $100,000 in damages to Kentucky couple David Ermold and David Moore, or $260,000 in legal fees. But the request goes a step further and calls for the court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that determined same-sex couples had a right equal to heterosexual couples to marry who they choose.
Davis, a born-again Christian, has been fighting for roughly a decade, claiming she had a religious right to refuse to issue marriage licenses that violate her beliefs. She was back in court in February, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against her, saying she was “being held liable for state action,” not for free speech as a private citizen.
Liberty Counsel’s Mathew Staver, the lead attorney for Davis, has made clear he ultimately saw Davis’ case as a venue to strike at the Obergefell ruling.
“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when’ Obergefell will be overturned,” Staver told the Kentucky Lantern earlier this year. “I have no doubt that Obergefell will be overturned, and the issue will be returned back to the states as it was before 2015.”
"Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis's rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis's arguments do not merit further attention," William Powell, attorney for David Ermold and David Moore, the couple that sued Davis for damages, said in a statement, according to ABC News.
While legal principles for years treated Supreme Court decisions that stood for 10 years as settled law, that appeared to change after justices in 2022 overturned the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion access. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, made clear he was ready to strike down marriage equality as well.
Importantly, Democratic President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act later that year, a federal law to ensure marriage equality remains protected in federal statute.
The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School estimates that there are 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., including 591,000 that wed after the Supreme Court decision in June 2015. About 20 percent of married queer couples are parenting a child under 18.
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