Kim Davis, the infamous Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples nearly a decade ago following the Supreme Court ruling making marriage equality the law throughout the U.S., filed a legal challenge against fees she has to pay because of her refusal to comply with the law.
In doing so, Davis’s lawyers argue that
Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling in question, was made in error. They’re seeking to have the fees she owes tossed, and the decision recognizing marriage equality similarly reversed.
Obergefell was narrowly decided in 2015 in a 5-4 decision acknowledging that several states’ laws were discriminatory and violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Far right conservatives have sought to challenge that ruling ever since...
The legal challenge portrays Davis as being “one of the first victims” of the
Obergefell decision. It seeks to have that ruling re-examined, to determine whether the “right to marry for same-sex couples…instantly overrode the constitutional right to religious accommodation under federal and state law.”
Notably,
the challenge from Davis cites
the concurring opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas in 2022’s
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling, which upended nearly half a century of abortion protections in the U.S. Thomas wrote that the Court’s decision in that case didn’t go far enough, and that cases protecting birth control access, the right of LGBTQ people to be free from persecution for engaging in consensual sex, and the ability for same-sex couples to wed, should be reexamined by the conservative Supreme Court.
Citing Thomas’s concurring opinion, Davis’s challenge states that, “‘
because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to [same-sex marriage],’ and especially not a right to receive a same-sex marriage license from a specific government official, regardless of that individual’s religious convictions.”
Davis’s challenge concludes that this is a “unique opportunity” to “revisit” the Obergefell decision — claiming that it should be overturned partly because acceptance of LGBTQ people “was not grounded in the nation’s history or traditions,” a bizarre standard that conservatives on the Supreme Court created to justify ending protections for reproductive rights.
