Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 2015 on gay marriage, must pay $260,104 in fees to attorneys who represented a couple, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Despite Davis’ attorneys arguing that the fee request by the same-sex couple’s lawyers was excessive, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning said that the former clerk’s lawyers exaggerated and “belie[d] logic,” the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The $260,104 in attorneys fees is in addition to $100,000 in damages a jury ordered Davis to pay David Ermold and David Moore, a couple who won a lawsuit against her last September. Davis’ attorneys are expected to appeal Bunning’s ruling.
“They sought to vindicate their fundamental right to marry and obtain marriage licenses, and they did so,” Bunning said of the couple.
The ruling is the latest in a more than eight-year legal struggle for Davis, an evangelical Christian who was the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, in 2015, shortly after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that same-sex couples are guaranteed a right to marry under the U.S. Constitution. Davis made headlines after the decision when Ermold and Moore walked into the Rowan County Courthouse followed by journalists and protesters, seeking to obtain a marriage license.
To avoid issuing any marriage licenses to gay couples, which Davis said was against her religious convictions, she refused to hand out marriage licenses to any couple. After entering the courthouse in September of 2015, Ermold asked Davis “under whose authority” she refused to issue a marriage license, according to The New York Times.
“Under God’s authority,” she responded.
Davis was then jailed for five days for contempt of court, and the gay couple’s marriage license was issued by a deputy clerk after Davis’ name was removed from the form while she was behind bars. The former county clerk was also sued by another gay couple whose license she denied, but a separate jury didn’t award them any damages, WKYT reported.
Davis lost her re-election bid in 2018 to Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr. by eight percentage points, Fox News reported. Ermold, one of the men to whom Davis refused to issue a marriage license, also ran in the primary against Caudill Jr. in 2018, but came up short. After his primary loss, Ermold said he would prefer Davis win the election over Caudill Jr.
“I just want him to lose. I would rather Kim Davis win,” Ermold said. “At least Kim Davis has the integrity to stand up for what she believes in. Elwood Caudill is a liar.”
