Former Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis has been ordered by a federal jury to pay $100,000 in damages to a same-sex couple she refused to sign a marriage license for in 2015. Davis is represented by attorneys with Liberty Counsel, who plan to appeal the decision on her behalf.
The decision was made in court on Thursday, Sept. 14, when same-sex couple David Ermold and David Moore requested $50,000 each in damages. They claimed that Ermold had lost his job at the University of Pikeville as a result of the case with Davis. The University’s Director of Human Resources then testified that this claim was false and that Ermold’s position was one of several terminated due to downsizing. According to Liberty Counsel, Ermold and Moore then “changed gears during the trial to allege they should receive damages for hurt feelings.”
Liberty Counsel argues that evidence provided in court does not match the jury’s decision and, for that matter, did not even warrant being given over to the jury. As a result, they claim that the judge violated a rule of civil procedure by sending the case to the jury without sufficient evidence warranting damages. “Binding Sixth Circuit law states that the mere testimony of a plaintiff that he was embarrassed, humiliated, etc., without any other evidence of damages, cannot suffice to merit a damages award,” they state.
Ermold v. Davis is not the only case against Davis for her actions in 2015. Yates v. Davis, a similar case between Davis and same-sex couple James Yates and William Smith, was tried in tandem with Ermold. However, no damages were awarded in Yates because, in the words of Daniel Schmid, one of Davis’ attorneys, “that is what the evidence required.”
Ermold’s and Moore’s co-counsel Joe Buckles told National Public Radio that he was “thrilled” about the jury’s decision in Ermold. He stated that the couple was “completely vindicated,” and that the case is not really about Davis’ religion, nor is it about Moore’s and Ernold’s right to marry—“The case is about a government official that just refused to do her job. It’s a pretty simple case.” He called it a “terrible injustice” that Yates and Smith did not receive damages in their case.
In June 2015, after the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage on the national scale, Davis began refusing to issue marriage licenses for all couples. Her refusal was based on deeply held religious convictions against same-sex marriage. In an interview with Fox News, she said that in January 2015 following her election, she wrote “every legislator and every senator that we have in our state,” begging them “to get legislation on the floor to protect clerks like myself and many others who had religious objections” to same-sex marriage. She received one response.
Davis spent five days in jail after refusing U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s order to grant licenses. She was released when her deputy clerks began issuing marriage licenses in her absence and Bunning ordered her not to interfere.
In March of 2022, Bunning declared that Davis’s actions violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to marry, and that “the only remaining issue is the issue of damages.”
Liberty Counsel argues that Davis should be protected because she was “entitled to an accommodation of her sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage under the First Amendment and Kentucky law.” They plan to argue for religious accommodation under the First Amendment, as well as the belief that Obergefell was “wrongly decided and should be overturned.”
Davis has come under intense media criticism since 2015. However, she has also received great support from conservative Christians around the country, even receiving the “Cost of Discipleship Award” in 2015 by Family Research Council. She also received the National Religious Broadcasters President’s Award in 2016.
“I love the homosexuals,” Davis told The Christian Post in 2018. “I can love the soul and hate the sin. That’s what God says we are to do. I simply couldn’t compromise on my beliefs.” She told Fox News that to her, it was not an issue simply about homosexuality, but about “upholding the Word of God and how God defined marriage from the beginning of time.”
Liberty Counsel anticipates Davis’ case will go to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and from there to the U. S. Supreme Court.
