SCOTUS orders thrice-divorced KY county clerk to issue marriage license

[GMDino]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/09/03/rowan-county-ky-court-clerk-marriage-licenses-gays/71635794/

Quote:SHLAND, Ky. — Five of six deputies in the office of a Kentucky county clerk found in contempt of court and jailed Thursday for her refusal to issue marriage licenses in wake of the Supreme Court decision to allow gays to wed say they will process the paperwork starting Friday.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning had placed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in the custody of U.S. marshals ready to take her to Boyd County jail if her office had not complied, saying fines were not enough and allowing her to defy the order would create a "ripple effect."

"Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense," said Bunning, who said he has deeply held religious beliefs as does Davis. "Oaths mean things."

Davis, who was tearful at times, testified that she could not obey Bunning's order because God's law trumps the court. The sixth of her deputies who also said he would not issue licenses is her son.

"My conscience will not allow it," Davis said. "God's moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties."

Bunning warned other clerks — at least two other counties in Kentucky also shuttered their marriage-license operations for all couples — that his order applied to them, too. Five of Davis' six deputy clerks told Bunning in an afternoon hearing that they would issue licenses, WOWK-TV, Charleston-Huntington, W.Va., reported; the holdout was Davis' son, who works in his mother's office.

As word of Davis' arrest became known in the crowd that numbered more than 100 protesters outside the courthouse, cheers and chants erupted.

"I'm glad the court sent a strong message that you have to follow the law," said Timothy Love of Kentucky, one of the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage.

Those supporting Davis decried the decision, with one man falling on the courthouse steps to pray.

"It's very unjust," said the Rev. Randy Smith of Morehead, Ky., where Davis' office is located. "Religious liberty has been trampled on today."

Lawyers inside the courtroom with the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which is representing Davis, argued that she met a legal test for protection under federal law because her convictions created a "factual inability" to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

But lawyers for the couples repeatedly pressed Davis to admit that her policy is the result of a personal choice.

Bunning agreed and said fines for Davis, who makes $80,000 a year, would not be enough to ensure that she would follow his orders. He also raised concerns that supporters, whom she said are raising money for her, would pay any fine he levied against her, hampering its force.

"I don't do this lightly," he said. "It's necessary in this case."

Chris Hartman, head of the Fairness Campaign advocacy group, said he thought the judge would levy fines but hoped that jailing Davis would act as a strong deterrent for others who might refuse to follow the law.

Some thought the move could turn Davis into a martyr among gay-marriage opponents.

Though Davis was tearful as she testified how she came to Christ in 2011 following the death of her mother-in-law, she appeared straight faced as marshals led her out of the courtroom. When previously asked her beliefs, she has said she is an Apostolic Christian.

Outside, each side continued to clash.

Ashley Hogue, a secretary from Ashland, held a sign outside the courthouse that read, "Kim Davis does not speak for my religious beliefs."

"This is so ugly," she said, wiping away tears. "I was unprepared for all the hate."

Demonstrator Charles Ramey, a retired steelworker, downplayed the vitrol.

"We don't hate these people," he said. "We wouldn't tell them how to get saved if we hated them."


Davis has been resisting suggestions that her deputies could issue the licenses because her name appears on the certificates. But the crux of the contempt case against her involves Kentucky law, which, unlike some states' laws, requires county clerks to issue marriage licenses.

When four couples — two gay and two straight — filed suit against Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the June Supreme Court ruling, she argued that they could be served in other Kentucky counties. Bunning, son of GOP Sen. Jim Bunning who retired from the U.S. Senate in 2011, told her she or her deputies must issue the licenses but stayed his order until this past Monday as she filed an appeal with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

When that stay expired, appeals court judges declined to renew it. And when she asked the Supreme Court to weigh in Monday, justices in Washington refused.