Court fight over same-sex marriage aims to bring down landmark ruling that made it legal
County clerk sends religious rights fight to 6th Circuit, with aim at Supreme Court
Many disputes arose a few years ago when the then-liberal U.S. Supreme Court created, in a decision condemned as unrelated to the Constitution, same-sex “marriage” for the entire nation.
One of the more vicious was a series of lawsuits against a Kentucky county clerk who declined to issue ANY marriage licenses for a time because of the conflict the court decision created with her own constitutionally protected religious rights.
An activist federal judge, David Bunning, took up the LGBT agenda and put Kim Davis in jail for a time. And two same-sex duos sued her for damages.
One of those cases was ended without damages, but another jury awarded each of the duo $50,000 in damages and Bunning piled on with an order for her to pay some $240,000 in lawyers’ fees.
That’s the case that’s now going to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But the goal is much higher than that single verdict.
The filing, by Liberty Counsel, which has defended Davis over the years since she was attacked, raises multiple contentions on appeal.
First is that no jury ever should have gotten the case because plaintiffs offered no “competent” evidence of any damages whatsoever. Then they “proved” damages with no more than “speculation, conjecture, and their own brief testimony.”
And the trial court mistakenly rejected Davis’ contention she was entitled to a reasonable accommodation because of “sincerely held religious beliefs under the First Amendment and Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
But then the appeal gets to the real fight: “The district court erred by finding that Obergefell created a clearly established constitutional right that superseded Davis’s pre-existing fundamental, textual constitutional rights to religious exercise.”
Obergefell was the high court ruling that literally “created” out of a political agenda the “right” in the Constitution to same-sex marriage, when marriage is not even mentioned in the document.
And, the appeal charges, “Obergefell should be overturned for the same reasons articulated by the court in Dobbs,” Dobbs being the decision that decimated the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that similarly created a federal “right” to abortion.
The appeal charges, “Obergefell’s atextual rights creation was not deeply rooted in the nation’s history or traditions.”
In fact, the appeal explains “Obergefell was not grounded in the nation’s history or traditions, nor could it have been because it was not rooted in any nation’s history or traditions. As Chief Justice Roberts noted, the right that the Obergefell majority created out of whole cloth was inconsistent with ‘the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history.’ Indeed, ‘marriage has existed for millennia and across civilizations [and] [f]or all those millennia, across all those civilizations, marriage referred to only one relationship: the union of a man and a woman.'”
The argument points out that the then-liberal majority on the court “discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.”
The fight, of course, would have to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court for Obergefell to be overturned.
Liberty Counsel explained the background, “In 2015, two same-sex couples who sought marriage licenses from Davis sued because she declined to issue the licenses due to her religious beliefs even though she referred the couples to other clerks who would. Despite Davis receiving an eventual religious accommodation from the state to abstain from granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the litigation against Davis continued. In Ermold v. Davis case, along with a second case in Yates v. Davis, two juries heard the same evidence and the same arguments in both cases. The jury in the Yates case awarded zero damages because the evidence did not support the awarding of any damages. The plaintiffs in that case originally asked for $300,000 in damages.”
But, the report said, “The Ermold jury reached a verdict of $50,000 for each plaintiff and the judge also awarded the plaintiffs an additional $246,000 in attorney’s fees and $14,000 in expenses despite lacking evidence to support the awarding of emotional damages.”
“Kim Davis deserves justice in this case since she was entitled to a religious accommodation from issuing marriage licenses under her name and authority. This case has the potential to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and extend the same religious freedom protections beyond Kentucky to the entire nation,” explained Liberty Counsel chief Mat Staver.
Davis had sought a religious accommodation, and was granted one by new Gov. Matt Bevins several months later.
Her state legislature even passed a law permanently granting all clerks an accommodation to opt out of having their signatures on licenses for same-sex duos.
But the court cases had developed in the interim.
Davis had explained, “I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven-or-Hell decision. For me, it is a decision of obedience.”
WND later reported that the case got a “Told you so,” from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after the eight-member high court declined to review one issue of the attacks on Davis.
In a statement then, Thomas said Davis “may have been one of the first victims” of the Supreme Court’s “cavalier treatment of religion” when it issued its same-sex marriage ruling, “but she will not be the last.”
Thomas called Davis a “devout Christian” who “found herself faced with a choice between her religious beliefs and her job.”
“Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws,” Thomas wrote. “Moreover, Obergefell enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.”
In fact, since then the state of Colorado twice has launched attacks on Christians who failed to promote the state’s messaging on same-sex unions, a baker and a web designer. And both times it has suffered defeat at the Supreme Court, including once when the justice scolded the state for its hate of Christianity.
Thomas pointed out the high court’s decision on same-sex marriage was found “nowhere” in the 14th Amendment.
“Several members of the court noted that the court’s decision would threaten the religious liberty of the many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman. If the states had been allowed to resolve this question through legislation, they could have included accommodations for those who hold these religious beliefs,” he said.
“The court, however, bypassed that democratic process. Worse still, though it briefly acknowledged that those with sincerely held religious objections to same-sex marriage are often ‘decent and honorable’ … the court went on to suggest that those beliefs espoused a bigoted worldview…”
Thomas noted that the four justices who didn’t agree with the ruling “predicted that ‘these … assaults on the character of fair-minded people will have an effect, in society and in court.'”
“Those predictions did not take long to become reality,” he wrote, citing the Davis case.
The former county clerk is a Christian, he said.
“When she began her tenure as clerk, Davis’ sincerely held religious beliefs – that marriage exists between one man and one woman – corresponded with the definition of marriage under Kentucky law,” Thomas said.
At the time, she was lobbying for amendments to state law to protect religious rights, he said.
“But those efforts were cut short by this court’s decision,” he said.
“As a result of this court’s alteration of the Constitution, Davis found herself faced with a choice between her religious beliefs and her job. When she chose to follow her faith, and without any statutory protection of her religious beliefs, she was sued almost immediately.”
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