Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry, the justices are once again being asked to revisit that ruling — this time by a former Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed for defying it.
Kim Davis, who served as Rowan County Clerk until 2018, filed an appeal late last month asking the high court to take her case. She is challenging lower court rulings that left her responsible for $100,000 in damages and $260,000 in attorneys’ fees after she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the wake of the Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“If ever there was a case of exceptional importance,” Davis’s petition reads, “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
The couple at the center of the lawsuit, David Ermold and David Moore, say the Court should reject Davis’s request. “Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree,” their attorney, William Powell, told ABC News.
Davis, represented by the religious advocacy group Liberty Counsel, argues that the First Amendment’s free exercise clause shields her from liability. Her petition also directly challenges Obergefell, calling the ruling a “legal fiction” and citing dissents from Justices Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts to bolster her argument.
The filing goes further, asking the Court to reconsider the doctrine of substantive due process — the legal reasoning that has been used to protect rights not explicitly named in the Constitution, including privacy, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, and, until 2022, abortion.
The appeal lands amid renewed conservative efforts to scale back Obergefell. As of 2025, at least nine states have proposed legislation to block new same-sex marriage licenses or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to overturn the decision. In June, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to make undoing Obergefell one of its top priorities.
Public opinion remains strongly in favor of marriage equality: more than two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage, according to Gallup. Still, if the Court were to hear Davis’s case and overturn Obergefell, marriage laws would return to the states. Under the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, states and the federal government would still be required to recognize marriages performed where they are legal.
The Court has not yet said whether it will take Davis’s appeal, but its decision could reopen a legal and political battle many believed was settled years ago.
