Ex-Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Urges US Supreme Court to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage Ruling, Calls It a ‘Legal Fiction’

Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who once refused to issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couple, is asking the US Supreme Court to revisit — and overturn — its landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The 59-year-old became a central figure in the national debate over marriage equality after she denied a license to David Ermold and David Moore just months after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Davis spent five days in jail for defying the order and was later ordered to pay $100,000 in damages for emotional distress, along with $260,000 in attorneys’ fees.

In a 90-page petition filed last month, Davis urged the court to review a lower court’s 2022 ruling that found she had violated the couple’s constitutional right to marry. Her legal team from Liberty Counsel argued that she acted within her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion when she refused to issue the licenses.

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“If ever a case deserved review, the first individual who was thrown in jail post-Obergefell for seeking accommodation for her religious beliefs should be it,” Liberty Counsel wrote. The petition also asks the court to consider “whether Obergefell v. Hodges … and the legal fiction of substantive due process, should be overturned.”

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman, said Davis’ case highlights what he calls a threat to religious liberty. “Obergefell cannot just push the First Amendment aside to punish individuals for their beliefs about marriage,” he said. “The High Court now has the opportunity to finally overturn this egregious opinion from 2015.”

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On the other side, William Powell, attorney for Ermold and Moore, expressed confidence that the justices won’t take up the case. “Marriage equality is settled law,” said Powell, who serves as senior counsel at Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. “We are confident the Supreme Court, like the court of appeals, will conclude that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention.”

This isn’t the first time Davis has tried to get the case before the nation’s highest court. In 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal.