In 2015, the high court ruled that the Constitution requires all states to grant licenses for same-sex marriages.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 10 rejected a challenge to its landmark 2015 ruling that requires all states to grant licenses for same-sex marriages.
The nation’s highest court declined to grant the petition in Davis v. Ermold in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision.
The petition was filed by former Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis, who, a decade ago, would not sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
Davis declined to sign the licenses after the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in June 2015 in a case called Obergefell v. Hodges that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires all states to grant licenses for same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages carried out in other states.
Days after the Obergefell decision, David Moore and David Ermold sought a marriage license from Davis. She declined, saying she was acting “under God’s authority” and advised the couple to seek a marriage license in another county.
The men sued for civil rights violations, seeking damages. A federal district court issued an order in a separate case directing Davis to issue marriage licenses.
Not long after the Obergefell decision, Kentucky’s then-governor, Steve Beshear, directed all county clerks, including Davis, to “license and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recounted in its March 6 ruling that upheld a civil judgment against Davis.
Davis took the position at the time that her office would not issue any marriage licenses “until the state passed legislation to grant her an accommodation,” the ruling said.
While Davis’s appeal of the court order was pending, Kentucky enacted a law allowing clerks’ names to be left off marriage licenses. Davis accepted this and asked for her appeal to be dismissed.
The Sixth Circuit declined to dismiss the appeal because the plaintiffs were seeking damages.
The legal proceeding went on for years before a federal jury awarded $100,000 in total compensatory damages to Moore and Ermold.
The Sixth Circuit did not disturb the jury verdict and held that Davis was not entitled to immunity from suit as a government official, the ruling said.
Davis’s attorney, Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm, was disappointed that the Supreme Court did not take the case this time, but predicted it would do so in the future.
“Davis was jailed, hauled before a jury, and now faces crippling monetary damages based on nothing more than purported hurt feelings,” Staver said in a statement.
The Supreme Court is allowing a lower court decision that strips Davis of her immunity as a government official and of her First Amendment-based religious expression defense, he said.
“This cannot be right because government officials do not shed their constitutional rights upon election,” Staver said.
