One couple impacted by her decision sued Davis for emotional distress, and a jury found in their favor, granting them a total of $100,000 in damages and $260,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Liberty Counsel, acting on behalf of Davis, is asking the court to overturn that decision and also overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.
“If ever there were a case of exceptional importance, the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it,” Liberty Counsel said.
The appeal, filed last month, says that Davis has a First Amendment defense against a claim based solely on emotional damages.
It argues that same-sex marriage was “wrongly” decided because it “threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.”
Liberty Counsel cites judges who dissented from the 2015 ruling in the appeal, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who said that Obergefell would have “potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”
It also noted that when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the court found the Due Process Clause “does not secure any substantive rights,” including abortion.
Liberty Counsel argued that this meant it did not secure a right to same-sex marriage either.
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court panel concluded that Davis “cannot raise the First Amendment as a defense because she is being held liable for state action, which the First Amendment does not protect,” ABC News reported.
William Powell, the attorney for David Ermold and David Moore, who sued Davis, said they were confident the Supreme Court would not side with Davis.
“Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention,” Powell said in a statement to ABC News.
The appeal comes as several Republican-led states are actively seeking to challenge same-sex marriage rights by urging the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision.
This includes Idaho, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Iowa, which have introduced resolutions calling for the reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Supreme Court could decide to not hear the case
At the same time, other states—including Colorado, California, and Hawaii—are moving in the opposite direction to secure marriage equality in state law in the event Obergefell is overturned.
The nation's largest Protestant Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, voted in June to make overturning the ruling a top priority.
If the Supreme Court does hear the case and ultimately decides to overturn same-sex marriage, the ruling would not invalidate previous marriages.
It could also decide against hearing the appeal, which would allow the lower court's ruling on Davis to stand.
“Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem wildly uninterested. Maybe Justice Neil Gorsuch, too,” Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal analyst and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions, said.
“There is no world in which the court takes the case as a straight gay marriage case,” she added.
“It would have to come up as a lower court holding that Obergefell binds judges to accept some other kind of non-traditional marital arrangement.”
