The Supreme Court said it will not revisit its ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The case was brought by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue a marriage license to same-sex couples after the court’s 2015 decision.
The court turned away Davis’ appeal to overturn a lower-court decision ordering her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple denied a marriage license. Davis said she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs.
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What was the 2015 decision?
In June 2015, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with current Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, dissented from the majority opinion.
Since the decision, Thomas has called for erasing the ruling. Alito has criticized the decision but recently said he was not advocating its reversal. Roberts hasn’t spoken on the subject since he wrote his dissenting opinion.
Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted in favor.
The decision held that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Before the decision, 36 states and Washington, D.C. had legalized same-sex marriage.
Since the 2015 decision, nearly 600,000 same-sex couples have gotten married, according to the Williams Institute.
How is Davis related to the case?
After the Supreme Court released its decision, 14 counties in three southern states continued to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. One of those counties was in Kentucky, where Davis worked.
She contacted the governor’s office, requesting an executive order to protect clerks who oppose the ruling. Kentucky law requires county clerks to issue marriage licenses in their name. Davis then began turning away same-sex couples before denying marriage licenses to all couples.
A judge held Davis in contempt of court after she failed to comply with court orders saying she must issue marriage licenses to all qualified couples, including same-sex couples. The judge jailed Davis for eight days but released her after her staff began issuing licenses on her behalf without her name on the form. Kentucky state lawmakers later enacted a law that removed the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.
Davis later ran an unsuccessful bid for reelection as county clerk in 2018.
