Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to difficulty marriage licenses to same-sex {couples} approach again in 2015, is constant to press her case, turning up like a foul penny repeatedly. This time, it’s begging the Supreme Courtroom to listen to her cry, oh, and likewise to completely overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and do away with the correct to same-sex marriage.
In a standard world, this could be absurd. Demanding that the courtroom overturn a precedent that’s solely ten years previous as a result of a random conservative courtroom clerk is gloomy ought to be met with a swift refusal to grant certiorari—however we don’t have a standard courtroom. We’ve a courtroom dominated by conservative Christians who love overturning precedents and likewise love giving conservative Christians energy over everybody else on the subject of their dislike of the gays. So, Davis’ invitation to the courtroom to overturn Obergefell might, sadly, have legs.
Supreme Courtroom Justices Samuel Alito, left, and Clarence Thomas
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have already explicitly known as for the courtroom to “reconsider” Obergefell. Alito has been whining about this for years. In a 2020 speech to the Federalist Society, he complained that individuals who have “traditional views on marriage” may very well be “labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” He’s continued to worry about how, if same-sex marriage is authorized, bigots will probably be unhappy, so we have to do away with it.
When the courtroom declined one in every of Davis’ earlier makes an attempt to have her homophobic beliefs enshrined into legislation again in 2020, Thomas and Alito determined that was a good time to go off, saying that “Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision.” In 2024, when the courtroom declined to listen to a case about individuals being faraway from a jury as a result of they have been against same-sex relationships, Alito once more trotted out the “danger” of Obergefell.
Each Thomas and Alito are chomping on the bit to do away with same-sex marriage, and Davis is aware of it. Her petition to the courtroom begins by quoting Thomas’ assertion when the courtroom turned her away in 2020, about how Obergefell “threaten[s] the religious liberty of many Americans who believe marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman.” It then dramatically winds via Davis’ ten-year saga of making an attempt to undo same-sex marriage.
That’s all the time been Davis’ purpose right here. Ostensibly, she solely wished the state to take away clerk names completely from marriage licenses, so her title would by no means be sullied by showing on a wedding license for 2 dudes or two girls. She achieved that not lengthy after her refusal to difficulty licenses, as Kentucky then-Gov. Matt Bevin issued an government order in December 2015 eradicating clerk names from licenses.
However since what she needs is the eradication of same-sex marriage, Davis remains to be going. Certain, she additionally needs to get out from beneath the damages and legal professional charges she was ordered to pay in a lawsuit filed by one of many {couples} she refused to difficulty a wedding license for, however that’s a facet quest.
1000’s of individuals gathered on the Minnesota state capitol constructing through the Minnesota Senate debate on a identical intercourse marriage invoice in 2013.
Davis is represented by Liberty Counsel, which has devoted itself to eradicating same-sex marriage and another rights LGBTQ+ individuals may want to take pleasure in. Liberty Counsel members have prayed with the sitting justices contained in the Supreme Courtroom, which ought to be a catastrophic scandal, particularly as, on the time, Liberty Counsel had an amicus transient urging the courtroom to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver mentioned this was completely unfaithful. Nevertheless, Rob Schenck, a former Christian nationalist who based Religion and Motion, which was folded into Liberty Counsel in 2018, mentioned that he held prayer classes with conservative judges inside their chambers for 20 years.
Schenck has described how Religion and Motion developed a selected plan to woo the courtroom. The group educated wealthy {couples} to method Justices Thomas, Alito, and Antonin Scalia, giving them fancy meals and journeys whereas additionally providing prayers and Bibles. He additionally leveraged the Supreme Courtroom Historic Society as a method to get massive conservative non secular donors in entrance of the justices.
Now, all of us get to play the ready recreation and see if the courtroom’s conservatives see Davis’ newest try as a great way to overturn Obergefell. They’re actually primed to maintain declaring that LGBTQ+ individuals don’t have any civil rights if non secular conservatives don’t need them to.
Final time period, the bulk concurrently held that oldsters don’t have any proper to make sure their baby will get gender-affirming care, however dad and mom who don’t need their kids uncovered to any books about LGBTQ+ individuals want a particular opt-out provision in order that by no means occurs. They carved out a particular rule for companies that refuse to work with same-sex {couples} although, as a spot of public lodging, they’re required to serve everybody.
It’s so cool to have civil rights within the fingers of six hard-right non secular appointees who’ve expressed open hostility to same-sex marriage.
Decrease courts have held the road on Davis, repeatedly rejecting her makes an attempt to get out from beneath the damages she has been ordered to pay. However because the Supreme Courtroom has made clear that it doesn’t care in any respect what decrease courts assume, who is aware of what they’ll do right here, but it surely’s in all probability unhealthy.
