Kim Davis, a county clerk now famous for refusing to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, is suing the governor of Kentucky, claiming her religious liberty has been violated.
Kim Davis is suing Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, claiming a statement he made instructing all county clerks to obey the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage violated her religious liberty.
“According to the United States Supreme Court, the Constitution now requires that governmental officials in Kentucky and elsewhere must recognize same-sex marriages as valid and allow them to take place,” Gov. Beshear said in a statement last month. The Governor noted that one of the duties of a county clerk “is to issue marriage licenses, and the Supreme Court now says that the United States Constitution requires those marriage licenses to be issued regardless of gender.”
Davis, the county clerk for Rowan County accused by some for being hypocritical, as she has been married four times but refuses to let a same-sex couple wed once, yesterday filed a lawsuit claiming Beshear’s statement violated her religious liberty.
“The Commonwealth of Kentucky, acting through Governor Beshear, has deprived Davis of her religious-conscience rights guaranteed by the United States and Kentucky constitutions and laws, by insisting that Davis issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples contrary to her conscience, based on her sincerely held religious beliefs,” Davis’ lawsuit says, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Davis believes she needs protection from “Kentucky’s marriage policies,” despite the fact that she is a government employee sworn to uphold the state’s constitution.
Lex18.com adds that Davis’ lawsuit explains “that the licenses cannot be issued without her name, ‘Thus, every marriage license must be issued and signed in the county clerk’s name and by the county clerk’s authority. In other words, no marriage license can be issued by a county clerk without her authorization and without her imprimatur.'”
That effectively gives Davis complete power to deny anyone a marriage license for any reason, as long as she claims it violates her deeply held religious beliefs, should a court uphold her lawsuit.
“I’m perfectly content to let the Governor and the Clerk battle it out over who is responsible for the Clerk’s continued failure to perform the sworn duties of her office, so long as my clients are able to get licensed in the county they work and pay taxes in,” ACLU attorney Dan Canon told LEX 18. “But the bottom line is: elected county officials don’t get to make policy for their entire county based on their own personal religious beliefs. That’s not the way American law works.”
In a separate case, Davis is being sued by the ACLU on behalf of the same-sex couple to whom she has refused to issue a marriage license. Her attorneys last week likened her to a wartime conscientious objector.
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