Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis makes a statement to the media at the front door of the Rowan County Judicial Center in Morehead, Ky., in September 2015. Timothy D. Easley/AP
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge to its landmark 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
The petition came from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Davis was jailed for contempt of court, lost re-election, and a jury ordered her to pay $360,000 to a couple she refused to marry. She asked the Supreme Court to rule that she has First Amendment religious protection from liability for her actions.
The court declined her petition without comment.
Davis has argued that religious liberties conflict with Obergefell. In her petition she wrote, “If ever there 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.”
Others have sought to roll back or limit Obergefell. Lambda Legal says that in this year alone at least nine states have considered bills or resolutions criticizing Obergefell or seeking to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples. On Oct. 24, the Texas Supreme Court adopted language allowing judges to refuse to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies on religious grounds.
In a concurring opinion in the case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas urged that the Supreme Court should reconsider precedents on birth control, same-sex marriage, and same-sex intimacy.
Even if the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, same-sex marriages would still have federal protection under the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and recognizes same-sex and interracial marriages. But overturning Obergefell could let individual states refuse to recognize same-sex marriages.
By declining to hear Davis’s petition, the Supreme Court left the constitutional status of same-sex marriage intact for now.
