Kim Davis petitions Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell

A petition filed last month by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015, seeks to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Davis argues that the First Amendment’s free-exercise clause shields her from personal liability for denying the licenses, and her lawyers ask the justices to take up the case in a bid to revisit or overturn Obergefell. The petition has entered the court’s long conference process, but legal observers say the odds of the court agreeing to hear the case remain slim.

Davis’s petition stems from a civil action in which a jury awarded damages totaling more than $100,000 for emotional distress plus about $260,000 in attorneys’ fees after she, then Rowan County clerk, declined to issue licenses to a same-sex couple on religious grounds. Davis contends that applying the court’s Obergefell ruling to her case improperly imposes liability for acting on her religious beliefs as a public official. Her filing marks the first time a petitioner has explicitly asked the justices to overturn Obergefell since its 2015 decision, though the core...