From The Catholic Herald. (photo: Unsplash)
On 26 June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment required states to license and recognise same-sex marriages. Now, a decade later, the Court will consider whether to take up a case calling for that decision to be overturned.
The petitioner is Kim Davis, the former Rowan County clerk in Kentucky, who was jailed for six days in September 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Davis is appealing a $100,000 jury award for emotional damages, plus $260,000 in legal fees.
In her petition, filed in July, Davis argues that “the mistake must be corrected,” calling Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell “legal fiction.” Her lawyer, Mathew Staver, wrote: “If there ever was a case of exceptional importance, the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
Lower courts have rejected her argument that the First Amendment shields her from liability, noting that she acted as a state official. William Powell, attorney for Ermold and Moore, told ABC News: “Not a single judge on the US 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.”