kim davis
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AN 7 26
Kim Davis accused of hiding $400K to avoid paying court penalty
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rww
11/12/2025
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Liberty Counsel’s petition to overturn the court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling in Obergefell. Mat Staver, who heads the anti-LGBTQ group, insisted the next day that “it’s not if, but when, Obergefell will be overturned.”
While large majorities of Americans support marriage equality, religious-right groups are determined to destroy it. Staver has called the marriage equality ruling a “cancer” on the Constitution.
Liberty Counsel has spent the past decade representing Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who refused to allow her office to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court overturned state marriage bans.
The case that Liberty Counsel asked the Supreme Court to hear was about the specific question of whether Davis could be held personally liable for damages for denying a gay couple the license to which they were entitled. A federal judge ruled against Davis, awarding the couple damages and attorney fees, and an appeals court upheld that ruling.
Liberty Counsel appealed and asked the Supreme Court to go well beyond the legal question at hand and take the opportunity to overturn marriage equality altogether. The Court declined.
It’s good news that the Court rejected Liberty Counsel’s appeal. But Liberty Counsel and other religious-right groups are certainly not going to drop their efforts to overturn marriage equality.
“I have no doubt that Davis’ resolve will serve as a catalyst to raise up many more challenges to the wrongly decided Obergefellopinion,” Staver wrote. He vowed that his group “will continue working with state legislators and individuals to overturn Obergefell and to return the issue of marriage to the states.”
Liberty Counsel has powerful allies who want to see marriage equality eliminated.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-equality legal giant that led the legal effort to overturnRoe v. Wade,views reversing marriage equality as another of its “generational wins” goals. ADF drafted the state law that the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe, and it's nearly certain that ADF is working on a similar strategy to undo Obergefell. ADF was not involved in Kim Davis’s case, but it is active at the Supreme Court this term.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center is headed by Ryan Anderson, who published a road map for overturning marriage equality when he was still at the Heritage Foundation. EPPC fellow Nathanael Blake wrote earlier this year that same-sex couples' ability to get legally married reflects liberalism’s “hatred for human nature.” Another EPPC fellow, Andrew Walker, wrote that same-sex marriage reflects “moral lawlessness.” He mocked gay parents and their families, writing, “If you’re anything like me, the sight of gay and lesbian couples and small children cosplaying in idyllic family settings is proving to be too much.”
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- Joe Jervis: Judge Upholds $360,000 Judgment Against Kim Davis
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Kim Davis ordered to pay over $260,000 after denying same-sex couple marriage license - Alternet.org
819
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/court-delivers-brutal-ruling-against-kim-davis-the-kansas-clerk-who-blocked-same-sex-marriages/
no lnx
Court delivers brutal ruling against Kim Davis — the Kentucky clerk who blocked same-sex marriages
Written by Alex Henderson August 23, 2019
In 2015, Christian fundamentalist Kim Davis (who was serving as clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky at the time) was praised by the right wing after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — a violation of federal law. The U.S. Supreme Court had just, in effect, legalized same-sex marriage all over the country with its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Some same-sex couples filed a lawsuit in response, and a federal appeals court has reaffirmed that the State of Kentucky will have to pay a hefty amount thanks to Davis.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, on Friday, ruled that the State of Kentucky must pay almost $225,000 in legal fees that same-sex couples incurred because of their lawsuit against Davis. With this decision, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals was upholding a previous ruling by a federal district judge that ordered the State of Kentucky to pay that amount.
In its ruling on Friday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “Because Davis acted on Kentucky’s behalf when issuing and refusing to issue marriage licenses, the district court correctly imposed liability for the award on the commonwealth.”
It continued: “The district court ruled that Davis, as an official, acted on Kentucky’s behalf, meaning sovereign immunity protected her. Plaintiffs dispute that ruling. The court also ruled that plaintiffs pleaded a plausible case that Davis, as an individual, violated their right to marry and that the right was clearly established, meaning qualified immunity didn’t protect her. Davis disputes that ruling. We agree with the district court on both issues and therefore, affirm.”
The U.S. Supreme Court reached its 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015, recognizing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. The four right-wing dissenters in that case were Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts and the late Antonin Scalia — all appointed by Republican presidents. But the person who authored the decision for the majority in that case was not someone on the left wing of the Court, but rather, libertarian Justice Anthony Kennedy — a right-of-center Ronald Reagan appointee who tended to be fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues. Kennedy retired from the High Court in 2018 and was replaced by President Donald Trump’s nominee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in its decision on Friday, noted that because of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the United States. But because “same-sex marriage offended her religious beliefs,” the 6th Circuit wrote, “Davis took matters into her own hands. One day after the Supreme Court released Obergefell, Davis stopped issuing marriage licenses. She didn’t discriminate against same-sex couples, though; she stopped issuing licenses altogether. That meant that when plaintiffs — two same-sex couples who lived in Rowan County — sought marriage licenses from the Clerk’s Office, they couldn’t get them.”
In an opinion concurring with the majority of the court’s conclusions, Judge John Bush found that “Davis knew or ought to have known, to a legal certainty, that she could not refuse to issue marriage licenses, as was her duty under state law, because of moral disapproval of homosexuality. And if Davis truly believed that she had a right under [Kentuck law] to not issue marriage licenses, she should have sought and obtained judicial confirmation of her claim. That, she did not do.”
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Kim Davis ordered to pay $222,000 in couples’ legal fees because of her ‘conduct that violates civil rights’
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/every-senate-republican-but-one-just-voted-to-confirm-a-bigot-to-serve-as-federal-judge-for-life/
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Conservative legal group defends clerk's stand against gay marriage ...
https://www.reuters.com › article › us-usa-gaymarriage-kentucky-lawyers
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Sep 2, 2015 - The thrice-divorced Davis is an Apostolic Christian who announced ... Christian group, Alliance Defending Freedom have been involved in a ...
The controversial group at the center of the Pope Francis-Kim Davis ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com › news › acts-of-faith › 2015/09/30 › pope...
Sep 30, 2015 - The story behind the group representing Kim Davis. ... ideological position than the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was litigating the case.
Anti-gay marriage clerk Kim Davis takes her fight from Kentucky to ...
https://www.theguardian.com › world › oct › romania-anti-gay-marriage-c...
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Oct 13, 2017 - Anti-gay marriage clerk Kim Davis takes her fight from Kentucky to ... groups, including Liberty Counsel and Alliance Defending Freedom, have ...
Did Liberty Counsel do right by Kim Davis? - Courier-Journal
https://www.courier-journal.com › story › news › local › 2015/09/03 › kim-...
Sep 3, 2015 - Video | Vatican Doesn't Want You To Think Pope Endorses Kim Davis. 0:00. 0:00. AD. 0:00 ...... based Alliance Defending Freedom. But Greg ...
Bevin's lawyers: Kim Davis should pay legal bills for marriage fight ...
https://www.kentucky.com › news › politics-government › article225247295
Jan 30, 2019 - Matt Bevin publicly supported Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis during ... This case was initially instigated by Alliance Defending Freedom (an ...
Kentucky … again! Supreme Court hears homophobe's T-shirt case ...
https://www.patheos.com › blogs › thefreethinker › 2019/08 › kentucky-a...
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1 day ago - Image via YouTube/Alliance Defending Freedom ... court rulings on Friday concerning Kentucky's Kim Davis was the case of Blaine Adamson, ...
The religious right lost the fight over gay marriage in the U.S., but it ...
https://www.latimes.com › la-fg-romania-referendum-20181005-story
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Oct 5, 2018 - To that end, the Alliance Defending Freedom has held conferences and ... the U.S. group that defended Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis when ...
Religious Right's Romanian Anti-LGBTQ Referendum Fails | Right ...
www.rightwingwatch.org › post › religious-rights-romanian-anti-lgbtq-ref...
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Oct 9, 2018 - Kim Davis and Liberty Counsel's Harry Mihet on tour promoting marriage ... As we have noted, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the European ...
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