Source: Ty Wright / Getty
Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has already spent five days in jail, and now she could be back in court soon for altering marriage license forms issued to same-sex couples. On Monday, lawyers representing two gay couples and two straight couples questioned the validity of the new marriage licenses and asked a federal judge to order Davis’s office to reissue them.
If Davis refuses, the lawyers asked the judge to put the office in receivership and have someone else do it. In June Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide.
Two gay couples as well as two straight couples sued her and a federal judge ordered Davis to issue the licenses, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld. However Davis refused, citing “God’s authority.”
Following her refusal U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning sentenced her to 5 days in jail. Davis’ office issued marriage licenses while she was in jail, however the licenses did not include her name.
Bunning ruled those licenses were indeed valid and released Davis on the condition that she not interfere with her employees. However last week when Davis returned to work, she confiscated the marriage licenses and replaced them.
Instead of saying they were issued under the authority of the county clerk the new licenses say they were “pursuant to federal court order.” According to Davis this accommodation preserves her conscience while also granting licenses to same-sex couples.
On Monday, lawyers representing the American Civil Liberties Union wrote that the validity of the altered licenses is “questionable at best,” and the new licenses bring “humiliation and stigma” to the gay couples who receive them. Davis’ attorney and founder of the Liberty Counsel law firm, Mat Staver did not directly respond to the ACLU’s request for Bunning to put the office in a receivership. However Staver said he would formally respond to the ACLU’s motion Tuesday.
Staver also had this to say “Kim Davis has made a good-faith effort to comply with the court’s order,” Staver said. “The ACLU’s motion to again hold Kim Davis in contempt reveals that their interest is not the license but rather a marriage license bearing the name of Kim Davis. They want her scalp to hang on the wall as a trophy.”
Sam Marcosson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Louisville, said receiverships are “unusual and extraordinary,” and are reserved for situations where other legal remedies are unable to end an ongoing violation of the law.
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