Supreme Court denies appeal to overturn same-sex marriage rights
Photo courtesy of Daniel Quasar/Wikimedia Commons
In June of 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that marriage between same-sex couples would be legalized nationwide, demolishing bans on same-sex marriages in 14 states, as detailed by AP News. ABC News reported this past summer that Kim Davis and her attorney had formally asked the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell V. Hodges, the landmark case decided in 2015 which granted the right of marriage to same-sex couples in every state in the nation. The court cited the 14th Amendment’s protections of “fundamental liberties” in granting marriage rights to all, as per Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center.
Kim Davis worked as a Kentucky county clerk and garnered attention after the 2015 ruling when she “continued for weeks [after the Supreme Court’s ruling] to deny the [marriage] licenses" to couples, as explained by AP News. SCOTUSblog—a media company covering the Supreme Court and legal standards—provided more context around Davis’ actions, detailing that she had originally declined to issue a marriage license to one gay couple: David Moore and David Ermold.
AP News noted that Davis cited her religious faith as her reason to not issue the marriage license, saying it “would be an act of disobedience to [her] God.” As a result, Davis was sentenced to jail for being in contempt of the Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog explained that Davis thereafter stopped giving licenses to both same-sex and straight couples: “she was acting ‘under God’s authority,” she explained.
In July 2025, 10 years after the original decision, Davis and her attorney formally asked the Supreme Court to re-examine—and overturn—Obergefell V. Hodges. Davis, in her appeal, petitioned to the Supreme Court not only for the overturning of the decision, but also for “a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees,” according to ABC News. She argued that she was using her First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
The New York Times detailed that the Supreme Court declined the appeal without making a comment, “as is generally the case when [the court] denies petitions for reviews,” as explained by SCOTUSblog. As per the New York Times article on the matter, “at least four of the nine [Supreme Court] justices would have needed to vote to hear Ms. Davis’ case and revisit the marriage precedent, a major step that many legal experts had said they were not expecting the court to take.”
However, New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Harmon did provide some deeper insight into why some Americans were fearful that the Supreme Court was going to overturn the landmark 2015 case. She documented, according to United States census data, that the number of same-sex marriages in the U.S. had doubled in the past decade, with the number of same-sex marriages in the nation reaching over 770,000. Harmon also noted that, according to a survey from the global analytics and advisory firm, Gallup, Republican support for same-sex marriage decreased from 55 percent to 41 percent as of May of 2025.
The Supreme Court currently seats justices that are majority conservative in their rulings. NPR cited Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion, after the court overturned abortion rights, that the court should also reconsider rights regarding same-sex marriage and birth control. Jennifer Levi, a lawyer who worked on some of the nation’s first same-sex marriage cases, said with respect to this recent appeal and the court’s decision not to review it, “It’s important to continue to make people aware of how important those family protections are for so many people.”