The Supreme Courtroom on Monday denied a bid from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to appeal a $100,000 damages verdict and get the justices to revisit the landmark 2015 same-sex marriage rights resolution in Obergefell v Hodges.
The courtroom didn’t clarify its resolution.
The U.S. Supreme Courtroom, Nov. 7, 2025, in Washington.
Mariam Zuhaib/AP
Davis gained worldwide consideration after she refused to challenge a wedding license to a homosexual couple on non secular grounds in open defiance of the excessive courtroom’s ruling and was subsequently jailed for six days. A jury later awarded the couple emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys charges.
In a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August, Davis argued First Modification safety without cost train of faith immunizes her from private legal responsibility for the denial of marriage licenses.
She additionally claimed the courtroom’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — which rooted marriage rights for LGBTQ {couples} within the 14th Modification’s due course of protections — was “authorized fiction.”
“Ten years in the past, the Supreme Courtroom rightly acknowledged that equal safety requires entry to authorized marriage for same-sex {couples} on the identical phrases and situations as others, and reaffirmed the long-established precept that folks, not the federal government, ought to have the ability to resolve who they marry,” mentioned Mary Bonauto, the GLAD Regulation legal professional who efficiently argued the wedding rights case in 2015.
“The one factor that has modified since Obergefell was determined is that folks throughout the nation have seen how marriage equality supplies safety for households and youngsters, and that safety strengthens communities, the financial system and our society,” Bonauto mentioned in an announcement. “Immediately thousands and thousands of People can breathe a sigh of aid for his or her households, present or hoped for, as a result of all households deserve equal rights beneath the legislation.”
There are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex {couples} within the U.S., together with 591,000 that wed after the Supreme Courtroom resolution in June 2015, based on the Williams Institute at UCLA Regulation Faculty. Almost one in 5 of these married {couples} is parenting a baby beneath 18.
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis makes an announcement to the media on the entrance door of the Rowan County Judicial Middle in Morehead, Ky., Sept. 14, 2015.
Timothy D. Easley/AP
Decrease courts had dismissed Davis’ claims and most authorized consultants thought-about her bid a protracted shot.
“Though numerous commentators and activists have spent weeks claiming {that a} car for overturning Obergefell was being thought-about by the justices, no knowledgeable Courtroom observers ever thought that the Courtroom would grant assessment on this case,” mentioned Notre Dame Regulation professor Richard W. Garnett. “The case doesn’t really current, in a sq. and clear approach, the query the protection has urged it does. The eye centered on this minor, factbound petition tells us extra concerning the ongoing marketing campaign to fire up public feeling relating to the Courtroom than it does about stay constitutional questions.”
Davis’ petition was the primary since 2015 to formally ask the Courtroom to overturn the landmark marriage resolution; she was additionally thought-about one of many solely People with authorized standing to deliver a direct problem to the precedent.
The Supreme Courtroom’s resolution comes as conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex {couples} have pursued a renewed marketing campaign to reverse authorized precedent and permit every state to set its personal coverage.
To date in 2025, no less than 9 states have both launched laws aimed toward blocking new marriage licenses for LGBTQ folks or handed resolutions urging the Supreme Courtroom to reverse Obergefell on the earliest alternative, based on the advocacy group Lambda Authorized.
In June, the Southern Baptist Conference — the nation’s largest Protestant Christian denomination — overwhelmingly voted to make “overturning of legal guidelines and courtroom rulings, together with Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and household” a high precedence.
Final month, Texas courts adopted new guidelines permitting judges statewide to refuse to carry out wedding ceremony ceremonies for same-sex {couples} if it might violate a sincerely held non secular perception.
Whereas a powerful majority of People favor equal marriage rights, help seems to have softened in recent times, based on Gallup — 60% of People supported same-sex marriages in 2015, rising to 70% help in 2025, however that stage has plateaued since 2020.
Amongst Republicans, help has notably dipped over the previous decade, down from 55% in 2021 to 41% this yr, Gallup discovered.
