Hold onto your hats, folks—the U.S. Supreme Court just sidestepped a cultural lightning rod by refusing to hear a challenge from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who dug in her heels against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
According to NCR Online, on November 10, the justices turned down Davis’s appeal, leaving intact the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that cemented same-sex marriage as a constitutional right across the nation.
Let’s rewind to 2015, when Davis, then a county clerk in Kentucky, made headlines by flat-out refusing to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple, citing her personal beliefs.
That decision landed her in hot water, with a federal jury later ordering her to pay a hefty $100,000 in damages and $260,000 in attorneys’ fees to the couple she denied.
Davis’s appeal wasn’t just about the money—it was a bold push to get the Supreme Court to reconsider Obergefell, the landmark 5-4 decision that tossed out state laws restricting marriage to one man and one woman.
This was the first major attempt to unravel that ruling, but the justices, perhaps wary of reopening a settled cultural debate, said “no thanks” to taking up the case.
Many legal minds saw this coming, questioning whether Davis’s case had the chops to challenge such a significant precedent as Obergefell.
Robert George, a Princeton legal scholar, noted, “One question undoubtedly in the minds of some justices is whether, despite its being wrongly decided — and a usurpation by the judiciary of democratic legislative authority — the doctrine of 'stare decisis' counsels leaving the decision in place.”
Translation: Even if some justices think Obergefell was a judicial overreach, the principle of sticking to past rulings might keep them from touching it—especially in a case as messy as this one.
Mathew Staver, Davis’s attorney from Liberty Counsel, didn’t mince words, stating, “[Kim Davis] was jailed, hauled before a jury, and now faces crippling monetary damages based on nothing more than purported hurt feelings.”
While one can sympathize with Davis’s conviction, the law isn’t a feelings-based system, and Staver’s promise to keep fighting Obergefell feels like tilting at windmills when the Court won’t even hear the case.
Justice Clarence Thomas has hinted in past writings, like his concurrence in the Dobbs decision, that Obergefell and other due process precedents deserve a second look, a point Davis’s team leaned on heavily in their petition.
Yet, as Notre Dame’s Rick Garnett pointed out, this case never seemed like the right vehicle for such a monumental reversal, predicting the justices would pass on it due to its narrow, fact-specific nature.
On the flip side, voices like William Powell from Georgetown Law celebrated the outcome as a victory for same-sex couples, affirming their right to marry without fear of local officials playing gatekeeper.
While the Respect for Marriage Act of 2022 offers a federal safety net for existing same-sex and interracial unions, the broader cultural clash over marriage’s definition—echoed by groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who opposed Obergefell—shows this debate is far from over, even if the Court stays on the sidelines for now.
