WASHINGTON (AP) — supreme court On Monday, he rejected a request to overturn the landmark legalization decision. same-sex marriage Nationally.
The justices dismissed the appeal without comment. kim davisA former Kentucky court clerk refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Davis was seeking to ask the court to vacate a lower court order that ordered the couple to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees after being denied a marriage license.
Her lawyers repeatedly cited the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, the only one of the nine justices to seek to overturn the ruling on same-sex marriage.
Thomas was one of four justices who dissented in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are other dissenters on the court today.
Roberts has remained silent on the matter since writing a dissent to the lawsuit. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but recently said he was not advocating overturning it.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who did not appear on the court in 2015, said there are times, like in the 2022 case, when the court should correct a mistake and overturn the decision. ended the constitutional right to abortion.
However, Barrett recently suggested that same-sex marriage may fall into a different category than abortion because people have relied on that decision to get married and have children.
Kelly Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, praised the judge’s decision not to intervene. “Today, the Supreme Court made clear that refusing to respect the constitutional rights of others does not always have consequences,” Robinson said in a statement.
Davis brought national attention to Rowan County in eastern Kentucky by refusing to accept same-sex couples because her faith did not comply with the high court’s ruling. She did not comply with court orders to issue her license until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015.
She was released after staff issued a license on her behalf, but her name was removed from the form. The Kentucky General Assembly then enacted a law to remove the names of all county employees from the state’s marriage licenses.
davis lost his bid for reelection In 2018.
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