CURE News and Clergy Blog News and Commentary for Christians
Would our conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court actually overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), in which the court ruled 5-4 that the U.S. Constitution guarantees two people of the same sex the right to “marry”?
Some Americans believe the court should do just that. Kim Davis is one of them.
Davis, a Christian, was a clerk of court in Rowan County, Kentucky. She believes what the Bible teaches: marriage is the union between one man and one woman, and homosexuality is a sin. When the high court agreed to hear Obergefell, Davis sought a religious accommodation. She didn’t get one.
Davis did not want to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples under her name, so she temporarily suspended issuing all marriage licenses and again sought a religious accommodation.
Instead of receiving an accommodation Davis was fired, jailed, and sued. A federal court eventually dismissed all the lawsuits against Davis, but some of the parties sought damages. The jury in Ermold v. Davis awarded plaintiffs a total of $100,000. The judge awarded them $246,000 in attorney’s fees and $14,000 in expenses.
Davis is hoping the First Amendment will protect her from the damages in Davis v. Ermold. See The Case of Former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis and the Future of Obergefell — and Religious Liberty to read about the long history of Davis’s case.
Liberty Counsel (LC), Davis’s legal counsel, has filed a reply brief in Davis, asking the Supreme Court to protect her First Amendment rights.
One of the opposing parties is seeking “emotional distress” damages from Davis. She contends the First Amendment is an affirmative defense for a government official sued personally.
But the issue everyone is talking about is whether Obergefell was wrongly decided and should be overturned. Davis has asked the court to reconsider this case.
The Supreme Court will decide whether to take the case on November 7.
Justice Clarence Thomas certainly is amenable to striking down Obergefell. The court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992), returning the issue of abortion to the states.
Justice Thomas agreed with the majority but added a concurring opinion. He disagreed with the majority’s view that nothing in Dobbs should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that don’t concern abortion.
“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” he wrote (PDF).
Leftists lost it. At the time, a conservative-majority court had just ruled that there is no “right of privacy” in the Constitution for women to kill their unborn babies. The issue returned to the states. Then a conservative justice implied that the court should return marriage to the states as well.
“Kim Davis’ case underscores why the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn the wrongly decided Obergefell opinion because it threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman,” said Mat Staver, LC founder and chairman. “Like the abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, Obergefell was egregiously wrong from the start. This opinion has no basis in the Constitution. The High Court should overturn this egregious opinion from 2015.”
What do you think the Supreme Court will do?
