Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of Kentucky clerk who refused to issue license for same-sex marriage

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not hear a case from a Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, but two conservative dissenters in the court’s landmark 2015 decision repeated their criticism of the “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”

The court turned aside a case from Kim Davis, the former county clerk who was sued after she said her religious convictions kept her from recognizing same-sex marriages, even after the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to those unions in Obergefell v. Hodges. She was briefly jailed over the matter, and her case had attracted national attention.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they agreed with the court’s decision not to hear Davis’s petition, but used the occasion to renew their objections.

“Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last,” Thomas wrote. “Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other anti-discrimination laws.”

Thomas continued: “It would be one thing if recognition for same-sex marriage had been debated and adopted through the democratic process, with the people deciding not to provide statutory protections for religious liberty under state law. But it is quite another when the court forces that choice upon society through its creation of atextual constitutional rights and its ungenerous interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, leaving those with religious objections in the lurch.”

Still, Thomas and Alito said they agreed with the decision not to accept the case, because it did not “cleanly” present the questions they felt are raised by the court’s 5-4 decision.

“Nevertheless, this petition provides a stark reminder of the consequences of Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix.”