WASHINGTON: The United States Supreme Court has declined a request to overturn its historic 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country.
According to NBC Washington, the justices on Monday refused, without comment, to hear an appeal filed by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who gained national attention for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Davis had urged the court to reverse a lower court’s decision ordering her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple she denied marriage licenses, arguing that her religious beliefs should have exempted her from the ruling.
Her lawyers cited past comments by Justice Clarence Thomas, who has repeatedly criticized the 2015 decision and suggested it should be revisited.
Thomas was one of four dissenting justices when the ruling was originally delivered, alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom remain on the bench.
While Roberts has remained silent on the issue in recent years, Alito has continued to question the ruling’s legitimacy, though he recently clarified he was not calling for its reversal.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court after 2015, has said some precedents deserve to be overturned as seen in the 2022 case ending the constitutional right to abortion but noted that same-sex marriage might be different, since many Americans have built their families based on that decision.
Davis became a national figure in 2015 after defying court orders to issue licenses, claiming her Christian faith prevented her from complying with the law.
She was briefly jailed for contempt of court before her office eventually issued the licenses without her name.
The Kentucky legislature later changed the law to remove clerks’ names from all state marriage licenses.
Reacting to the latest decision, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, praised the Supreme Court’s stance.
The Supreme Court made clear today that refusing to respect the constitutional rights of others does not come without consequences,” she said in a statement.
