Former county clerk Kim Davis has asked a second time for the Supreme Court to take her case, with anti-LGBTQ+ advocates hoping it could be the one to lead the justices to overturn marriage equality.

Davis, a conservative Christian who has been married four times, refused to provide marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015 after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized marriage equality. Davis told the couple (who ultimately sued her) that she was acting “under God’s authority” when she refused to issue the license because she believes marriage is only between a man and a woman.

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She was jailed for five days for contempt for refusing to comply with a court order and has spent the last decade entangled in legal battle with two of the couples she discriminated against.

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“We are asking the Court to recognize the First Amendment as an absolute defense for Kim Davis and to overturn the 2015 Obergefell opinion, which has no basis in the Constitution,” Davis’s lawyer, Mat Staver of the anti-LGBTQ+ Liberty Counsel — a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group — told the Lexington Herald Leader.

Staver also claimed Obergefell “did significant damage to the historic definition of marriage, to states rights, to religious freedom, and to the rule of law.’

“It is time to end this legal fiction and undo the damage done,” he said.

According to the Herald Leader, the court request filed by Liberty Counsel on Thursday asks the Court to answer three questions: whether marriage equality should be overturned, whether Davis has qualified immunity that bars her from paying damages to a couple who sued her, and whether requiring her to issue marriage licenses to LGBTQ+ couples was a violation of her religious freedom.

Qualified immunity protects government officials from personal liability for violating someone’s rights, unless they are in violation of “clearly established” constitutional rights, as the Supreme Court case of Harlow v. Fitzgerald decided in 1982. Davis has already been denied qualified immunity multiple times in this case.

In the most recent request to the Supreme Court, Staver other Liberty Counsel lawyers echoed the thoughts of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and argued the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center that overturned the federal right to an end a pregnancy should serve as precedent in this case.

Thomas opened the door to marriage equality being overturned in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned reproductive rights. In his concurring opinion, he wrote that the same logic that was used to overturn reproductive may be used to overturn marriage equality and access to birth control.

The case in question involves David Ermold and David Moore. Last year, Davis was ordered to pay $260,104 in fees and expenses to the couple’s attorneys, and in 2023, she was ordered to pay them $100,000 in damages for violating their constitutional rights.

This is the second time Davis has requested the Supreme Court hear the case. The first time was in 2020, and the court declined. Although some on the right believe Davis is the key to ending marriage equality, experts told the Herald-Leader the Court is unlikely to use this case to do so since Davis’s actions were blatantly unconstitutional and since the case is so old.

Ermold and Moore’s lawyer, Bill Powell, agreed, saying that “not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’ rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’ arguments do not merit further attention.”

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