Supreme Court denies request to revisit same-sex marriage decision
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
By ANN E. MARIMOW
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request that it consider overturning its landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage a decade ago.
The court, without comment, declined the petition, filed by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who gained national attention in 2015 when she defied a court order and refused to issue same-sex licenses because of her religious beliefs.
She had asked the Supreme Court to reverse an order that required her to pay more than $300,000 to a couple denied a marriage license — and to overturn the same-sex marriage ruling from 2015.
At least four of the nine justices would have needed to vote to hear Davis’ case and revisit the marriage precedent, a major step that many legal experts had said they were not expecting the court to take.
Still, the justices’ consideration of Davis’ petition had set off alarms among gay Americans, who were already reeling from the Trump administration’s targeting of programs and funding that benefit LGBTQ+ individuals.
Gay Americans and their allies had been on alert since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority eliminated the nationwide right to abortion after 50 years, showing a willingness to undo long-standing legal precedent. In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to urge reconsideration of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Polls show that same-sex marriage now has broad public support. More than three dozen House Republicans helped pass legislation in 2022 that required states and the federal government to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages.
Mary Bonauto, the lawyer who argued the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court, praised the court’s action. “Today, millions of Americans can breathe a sigh of relief for their families, current or hoped for, because all families deserve equal rights under the law,” she said in a statement.
Even as many LGBTQ+ people celebrated the Supreme Court’s action, advocates and their lawyers said supporters of same-sex marriage should be vigilant about future attempts to overturn the 2015 precedent.
“Let’s not be naïve: Our opponents are well resourced and determined,” Kevin Jennings, the CEO of Lambda Legal, said in a statement. “Now is not the time to let down our guard.”
The composition of the Supreme Court has changed significantly since the court’s 5-4 decision in 2015 and moved to the right with the addition of three justices nominated by President Donald Trump.
Still, recent statements and writings from some of the conservative justices suggest a majority of justices may not be eager to revisit the landmark ruling in future cases.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett described in her recent memoir certain fundamental rights the court has recognized, including the “rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control and raise children.” She distinguished those from rights that she wrote are the subject of “complicated moral debate” and more open to interpretation by the court, including matters involving suicide and abortion.
In an opinion in 2020, Justice Neil Gorsuch made a similar point about rights the court had recognized that people have relied on to order their lives.
He cited so-called “reliance interests,” such as signing a contract, purchasing a home — or entering into a marriage.
Since the court’s 2015 decision, more than 800,000 same-sex couples have married and are raising nearly 300,000 children.
Even so, Richard W. Garnett, a law professor and the director of the Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society, said the petition from Davis was always a long shot that attracted outsized media attention.
“The case does not actually present, in a square and clean way, the question the coverage has suggested it does,” he said in a statement. The coverage, he said, “tells us more about the ongoing campaign to stir up public feeling regarding the court than it does about live constitutional questions.”
Davis became a symbol of religious opposition to same-sex marriage after the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015. She spent five nights in jail after she was found in contempt of court for defying a federal order to issue licenses to same-sex couples.
David Ermold and David Moore, a Kentucky couple, sued Davis after they had been refused a license and prevailed at trial in 2023. Davis was ordered to pay the couple $360,000 in damages and lawyers’ fees.
She appealed the judgment, claiming First Amendment protection from liability and asserted that the court had wrongly recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and should reverse its decision in Obergefell.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Davis in March, citing a recent Supreme Court decision that found public officials acting in their official capacity are not protected by the First Amendment.
Public officials cannot “wield the authority of the state to violate the constitutional rights of citizens if the official believes she is ‘follow[ing] her conscience,’” wrote Judge Helene N. White, a nominee of President George W. Bush.
Mathew Staver, a lawyer for Davis, asserted that the Obergefell opinion was “egregiously wrong from the start” and said his organization, Liberty Counsel, would continue to work to reverse it.
“It is not a matter of if, but when the Supreme Court will overturn Obergefell,” he said in a statement.
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