Posted on 09/13/2015 7:43:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling, filed a motion Friday asking an appeals court to allow her to refuse to issue licenses when she returns to work Monday, until her case is settled.
In the motion filed with the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the Rowan County clerk's attorneys urged that her entire office be allowed to abstain from issuing marriage licenses pending the court's decision on the case.
Her attorneys argued that U.S. District Judge David Bunning's initial order concerned only the couples who sued her. The judge violated Davis' right to due process during her appeal by including in his initial injunction any couple legally eligible to marry, the attorneys said, according to Reuters.
Davis' deputy clerks issued marriage licenses to the couple who sued her and other same-sex couples while she was in jail for six days until Tuesday. Her attorneys say the certificates issued without her authority have been void.
In a separate filing Friday, the Christian clerk's attorneys said that the case would be over if the governor uses the same authority that allowed him to change the certificates to be gender neutral to remove her name from the documents.
Bunning had ordered Davis to issue marriage licenses, but she cited "God's authority" as the reason to defy the Supreme Court ruling in June legalizing gay marriage across the nation. The judge ordered her arrest, and warned that any other clerk who refuses to issue licenses could also be found in contempt of court.
"God's moral law conflicts with my job duties," Davis told the judge before her arrest. "You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and your soul." She had defied several court orders to issue marriage licenses.
Bunning chose a prison sentence over a fine because he believed Davis, who makes $80,000 per year, would not comply with his order if fined.
"The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order," the judge said. "If you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that's what potentially causes problems."
A gay rights group, Planting Peace, has erected a billboard in Davis' hometown of Morehead, saying: "Dear Kim Davis, The fact that you can't sell your daughter for three goats and a cow means we've already redefined marriage."
However, many traditional marriage advocates and Republican presidential candidates are backing her.
Republican candidate Rick Santorum compared her with Martin Luther King.
"Martin Luther King went to jail because he didn't follow the law," Santorum said last week in a radio interview. "There's a long precedent in America from people saying, 'You know the law has to change to accommodate what is the right thing to do.'"
"She is showing more courage and humility than just about any federal office holder in Washington," former Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee said earlier in a statement.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul also earlier said that Davis' arrest would only "harden the resolve" of traditional marriage advocates. "I think it's a real mistake [to jail Davis], and even those on the other side of the issue, I think it sets their movement back," he said on CNN.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal both said earlier that Christians should be able to serve in elected office and not have to compromise their conscience. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker also said that the First Amendment guaranteed Americans' freedom of religion.
"I just want to give God the glory," Davis said after her release. "His people have rallied and you are a strong people. We serve a living God who knows exactly where each and every one of us is at. Just keep on pressing. Don't let down. Because he is here; he is worthy; he's worthy. I love you guys. Thank you so much."
That’s probably not gonna fly with the judge.
The Gov. or AG could probably accommodate her with an executive order or legal opinion until the KY legislators can change the law.
Doesn’t she feel she already has this “right”? If she is following her religious beliefs and they conflict with the law, how can the same law system remedy that?
Why wouldn't it? The SC and this judge ruled the Kentucky marriage law (that she is sworn to uphold, BTW) is unconstitutional, so he is not the legislature and can't pass a law and neither is she, so the is currently no law.
This article indicates the appeal is more complicated.
Kim Davis judge blasted for order covering ‘entire world’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3335943/posts
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/kim-davis-judge-blasted-for-order-covering-entire-world/
Liberty filed a motion for an emergency stay with the 6th Circuit because Bunning, who previously has ruled in favor of partial birth abortion and homosexual clubs for high schoolers, “without notice, expanded the injunction against Kim Davis while it was already on appeal.”
The motion argues that the district judge can’t change the substance of such orders without notice because of due process, Liberty Counsel explained.
Bunning “impermissibly broadened it to cover anyone in the world who seeks a license for same-sex marriage,” the legal team said.
Also, Liberty Counsel said that once the injunction was appealed by Kim Davis to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Bunning “had no jurisdiction over it, and thus no authority, to expand the injunction.”
“The original injunction ordering Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses should be moot because the plaintiffs who sought such licenses received them last Friday after Judge Bunning told the deputy clerks he summoned to court that they must issue the licenses or be sent to jail.”
The legal filing explains that when the injunction was announced by the judge, Davis filed an immediate notice of appeal, “depriving the district court of jurisdiction to alter or expand the injunction’s scope.”
However, Bunning “did just that, without fair notice or hearing, by entering a new injunction that materially expanded the original injunction while it was already on appeal.”
“The district court’s expanded injunction lays waste to well-established principles of jurisdiction and due process in the federal court system while an appeal is pending.”
Bunning also has installed himself in “a supervisory role over the operations of the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk’s office,” they argue.
“Seeks right” . . . what, the one put into force in the Constitution back in 1791?
Sure does! Someone tell Obama, Holder, Clinton, el at.
It is her conscience, not everyone else’s. If her conscience will not allow her to do her job, she should resign.
given the laws of kentucky have not changed regarding marriage,’i’d say they have to.
There is a name for people who pick and choose the laws they will obey. Democrats.
I'll be honest, this issue has grown tiresome for me and I think it's pretty clear that fighting gay marriage is a lost cause.
Just one man's opinion.
If I had to pick my neighbor between a moderate lesbian couple that minds their own business, a white leftist college couple, or a ghetto rat couple, I would choose the lesbian couple for the ones I know just mostly hang around their own people, work hard, and just want to be left the hell alone, though I am not a gay lifestyle believer.
In all honestly you are right it is a lost cause, and the government should have a long time ago got itself out of the marriage business and back then stopped telling who could be with whom and left it to the people which is freedom, that would have save us a lot of pain, and things like the gay marriage debate and even Loving vs VA would not have happened.
- just my opinion.
What I have never understood in the Kim Davis controversy is to what law the lower court judge expected Kim Davis to issue same sex marriage licenses?
Until the Kentucky state legislature created a new law in compliance with the SCOTUS’s (baseless) decision, she would have no legal authority to issue marriage certificates (of any kind). Existing Kentucky state marriage law is so intertwined throughout with the concept of marriage being between exactly one man and one woman that that concept is not legally severable. The effect then is that the entire law was struck down by the SCOTUS, leaving Kentucky without any valid marriage law until a compliant replacement is passed by the Kentucky state legislature.
Until the new law is written and passed, how can Kim Davis be held in contempt of court? Did the Kentucky state legislature already do this? None of the articles on Kim Davis that I have read seem to provide an answer to this key question.
She doesn’t want to sign off on any gay marriages. I don’t see why her office or the state need her signature in order to issue a marriage license. Just put some kind of official stamp on it showing the fees have been paid and paperwork submitted for the official record and be done with it.
If the lesbian couple did mind their own business and leave it at that maybe things would be different, but they don’t as a whole. What people need to realize is that the gay movement is seeking to overturn centuries-old Christian values that have conferred significant benefits on Christian populations. What they are offering us instead is a return to an unrestrained pleasure-based lifestyle that leads to despair, disease and death. I suggest you broaden your exposure to the gay “culture” and get a good close look at the path where they are trying to lure us. They are after the children of this generation, and won’t rest until they have disarmed all of our objections to a perverted lifestyle that leads to a much increased suicide rate, disease, alienation and self hatred.
So are you saying that unless the law is rewritten then nobody on Kentucky can get married, regardless of sexual orientation?
Yes, it seems to me that the exiting marriage law was struck down in its entirety, so until a compliant replacement law is created how can anybody get issued a legal marriage license? I am not a lawyer, so maybe I am missing some legal something.
It wasn't. The Obergfell decision struck down only those parts of marriage laws that prevent same-sex marriage.
I’m by far not a legalese guru and have a damn hard time understanding the wording. But
my understanding is Kim Davis lost based upon this recently issued ruling June 26, 2015.
She was ruled against under the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Or that is my understanding.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/scotus-opinion-document-obergefell-hodges/
Note:
June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges,
576 U.S. (2015), holding in a 5–4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is
guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
I wasn't really commenting on her position with respect to gay marriage. The fact is that KY State law requires her office to do it. The SC and this judge declared the entire law void for all practical purposes. The KY legislature has to fix this not her and not the judge. Writing a law is outside of their authority.
I had a group of friends in college 30 years ago, and we've kept loosely in contact since then. One of them moved to another state, and shortly thereafter revealed herself to be a lesbian. She lived with her girlfriend, and she still does.
Interestingly, that lesbian couple have been together continuously longer than any of the rest of us have maintained a relationship/marriage. While divorces and nasty breakups have plagued most of the rest of us, they're still going strong. So, who's to say?
I completely agree with you that I'd live next to them before I'd live next to a hood-rat or Marxist hetero couple.
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