Kim Davis, the previous Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed in 2015 for refusing to challenge marriage licenses to same-sex {couples}, requested the Supreme Court docket on Thursday to revisit its landmark determination in Obergefell v. Hodges, which successfully legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and celebrated its tenth anniversary in June.
Davis’s attorneys on the Christian nonprofit Liberty Counsel requested the court docket in a 90-page filing to evaluation a March ruling by the sixth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals upholding a decrease court docket’s discovering that Davis violated David Ermold and David Moore’s constitutional proper to marry when she denied them a wedding license in 2015, shortly after the Supreme Court docket issued its Obergefell determination.
A federal jury awarded the couple $100,000 in damages in 2023, and a federal decide ordered Davis final 12 months to pay Ermold and Moore an additional $260,000 in attorneys’ charges.
Davis argued in 2015 that granting the couple a wedding license would have violated her spiritual beliefs as a born-again Christian and “God’s definition of marriage.” She and her authorized crew have argued all through a decade-long authorized battle that, in denying the license, Davis was protected by her First Modification rights to freedom of speech and faith.
In March, a three-judge panel for the sixth Circuit dominated that Davis can’t increase a First Modification protection within the case “as a result of she is being held responsible for state motion, which the First Modification doesn’t defend.”
Liberty Counsel is asking the Supreme Court docket to overturn each the sixth Circuit determination and the excessive court docket’s ruling in Obergefell.
“Kim Davis’ case underscores why the U.S. Supreme Court docket ought to overturn the wrongly determined Obergefell v. Hodges opinion as a result of it threatens the spiritual liberty of People who imagine that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one girl,” mentioned Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman.
The group’s petition argues that the court docket ought to revisit and reverse its Obergefell determination “for a similar causes articulated in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Heart,” the case that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Obergefell was improper when it was determined and it’s improper immediately as a result of it was grounded fully on the authorized fiction of substantive due course of.”
Invoice Powell, counsel for Ermold and Moore, advised The Hill in an e-mail that the Supreme Court docket is unlikely to take up Davis’s case.
“Not a single decide on the U.S. Court docket of Appeals confirmed any curiosity in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we’re assured the Supreme Court docket will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments don’t advantage additional consideration,” he mentioned.
The excessive court docket declined to intervene in Davis’s case in 2020. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, conservatives who dissented from the court docket’s majority opinion in Obergefell, mentioned they agreed with the court docket’s determination to not settle for Davis’s attraction however used the event to resume their objections to its same-sex marriage determination.
“Davis could have been one of many first victims of this court docket’s cavalier therapy of faith in its Obergefell determination, however she is not going to be the final,” wrote Thomas, joined by Alito. “Because of Obergefell, these with sincerely held spiritual beliefs regarding marriage will discover it more and more tough to take part in society with out working afoul of Obergefell and its impact on different anti-discrimination legal guidelines.”
Davis’s attraction to the Supreme Court docket comes because it faces calls from Republican lawmakers to overturn Obergefell. In June, Southern Baptists voted overwhelmingly to approve a decision endorsing a ban on same-sex marriage and calling for the court docket to reverse its determination.
Nationwide assist for same-sex marriage stays at file highs, although a Could Gallup ballot confirmed Republican assist for marriage equality falling to 41 p.c, the lowest in a decade. In a separate survey carried out by three polling corporations in June, 56 p.c of Republican respondents mentioned they assist same-sex marriage.