Former Kentucky clerk in gay marriage case must pay additional $260K

The former Kentucky clerk who refused to grant a gay couple a marriage license must pay an additional $260,104 to the couple, a federal judge ruled last week.

David Ermold and David Moore sued former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in 2015 after she declined to issue the couple a marriage license because doing so would violate “God’s definition of marriage” and her religious beliefs as a Christian.

The additional fees Davis must pay are on top of the $100,000 in damages she was ordered to pay Ermold and Moore in September after losing the lawsuit the couple brought.

Davis’s legal team argued that the proposed attorneys’ fees put forward by the couple’s lawyers were too much, saying that the fees should be reduced by more than 50 percent. U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning sided with the couple and awarded them $246,026.40 in attorneys’ fees and $14,058.30 in expenses, according to court documents published last week.

Bunning said that the couple’s requested attorneys’ fees were “reasonable” in his order.

“Plaintiffs not only prevailed, but obtained the result sought. They sought to vindicate their fundamental right to marry and obtain marriage licenses; and they did so,” Bunning said in the order. 

Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing Davis, said in a press release they planned to file a motion this month “to reverse the jury verdict” from September that granted the couple $50,000 each. The law firm said Bunning’s order allowed them to file a motion to reverse the jury’s ruling “because there was insufficient evidence to award the plaintiffs monetary damages.”

“This case is far from over. Because of Kim Davis, every clerk in Kentucky now has the freedom to serve as an elected official without compromising their religious convictions and conscience,” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement.

“This case has the potential to extend the same religious freedom protections beyond Kentucky and to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which was wrongly decided and should be overturned,” he added.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 gave same-sex couples the right to marry.