The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to reopen the debate over same-sex marriage, rejecting a plea by former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, whose defiance of the 2015 ruling once made her a national flashpoint in the clash between faith and equality.
The court, maintaining its 6–3 conservative majority, declined to hear Davis’s appeal—effectively leaving intact the lower court orders that found her liable for denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision. That 2015 judgment recognized the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, reshaping the nation’s legal and cultural landscape.
Davis, who identifies as an Apostolic Christian, had argued that her refusal was an exercise of religious freedom protected under the First Amendment. Courts repeatedly disagreed. In 2023, a jury ordered her to pay $100,000 in damages to a couple she denied, with additional fees later raising the total to over $360,000.
“The denial of review confirms what the Constitution has already spoken—same-sex couples have the same right to marry as anyone else,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, hailing the decision as a reaffirmation of dignity and equality.
Davis’s legal team, however, vowed to keep pushing for the reversal of Obergefell, calling the precedent “constitutionally groundless.”
The case revived old tensions around one of the Supreme Court’s most consequential civil rights rulings. When Obergefell was decided in a 5–4 vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy—writing for the majority—famously declared that gay and lesbian couples sought not to be “condemned to live in loneliness,” but to participate equally in one of society’s oldest institutions.
Davis, elected to her county post, had spent six days in jail for contempt after defying court orders to issue marriage licenses. Her legal fight stretched across a decade, through multiple rulings rejecting her claim that her personal faith could override constitutional obligations in public office.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld those decisions, stressing that while the First Amendment protects personal religious expression, it does not insulate public officials from performing their duties.
Though Davis’s latest appeal has now been turned away, the broader ideological divide remains. With a more conservative bench than in 2015—and a precedent still eyed warily by parts of the right—the question of whether Obergefell might one day be revisited continues to linger in America’s ongoing legal and moral debate over equality and belief.
