Supreme Court rejects call to overturn its ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal seeking to overturn its landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
The justices rejected an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Davis had tried to get the court to overturn a lower court order requiring him to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney fees to a couple who had been denied a marriage license.
His lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices called for the same-sex marriage decision to be overturned.
Thomas was among four justices dissenting in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters on the court today.
Roberts has remained silent on the subject since writing a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but he recently said he was not advocating its reversal.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not a member of the court in 2015, said there are times when the court should correct errors and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended the constitutional right to abortion.
But Barrett recently suggested that same-sex marriage might be in a different category from abortion because people relied on the decision when they got married and had children.
Davis gained national attention in Rowan County in eastern Kentucky when she turned away same-sex couples, saying her faith prevented her from complying with the high court’s ruling. She defied court orders directing her to issue the licenses until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015.
She was released after her staff issued the licenses in her name but removed her name from the form. The Kentucky legislature then passed a law removing the names of all county clerks from the state’s marriage licenses.
Davis lost his re-election bid in 2018.
