Ten years after Obergefell v. Hodges—the landmark ruling that confirmed same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry—America is again staring down the barrel of a fight we already won. And the person trying to reload the gun? None other than Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who made international headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Davis spent six days in jail back then, defying a federal court order and turning her office into a national circus. Now, she’s back in the ring with a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to not only overturn the damages awarded to the couple she wronged, but to throw out Obergefell altogether. Her argument? That her “religious freedom” trumps the constitutional rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.
Let’s call this what it is: a calculated attempt to roll the clock back on civil rights. This isn’t just about marriage licenses in Kentucky—it’s part of a broader, coordinated effort by far-right lawmakers and extremist groups to undo decades of progress. Legislatures in at least nine states have introduced measures or resolutions urging the Court to reverse Obergefell. Religious lobbying organizations, including the Southern Baptist Convention, have made marriage-reversal a top priority.
The irony? Even if Davis somehow convinced the Court to revisit the issue, the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act still requires states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed elsewhere. But make no mistake—striking down Obergefell would open the floodgates for state-level attacks on marriage equality, making basic rights a matter of geography.
It’s worth noting that public opinion remains firmly on the side of equality—poll after poll shows strong majority support for same-sex marriage. But as we’ve seen in other areas of civil rights, public opinion is no guarantee when powerful political forces are willing to chip away at freedoms one lawsuit at a time.
This is about more than marriage. It’s about whether the U.S. will be a nation that moves forward or one that keeps dragging itself back into the quicksand of old bigotries. If the Court takes this case, it won’t just be deciding on a clerk’s misconduct from a decade ago—it will be deciding whether the arc of the moral universe still bends toward justice, or whether we’ve surrendered it to those desperate to bend it backward.
Bottom line: America should not be in the business of revisiting settled rights. Kim Davis isn’t a defender of liberty—she’s a cautionary tale about what happens when ideology tries to rewrite equality out of the Constitution. We’ve been here before. We can’t afford to go back.
Next in the series: Trial Balloons and Time Bombs: The New Playbook for Rolling Back Rights — how fringe lawsuits and symbolic bills are laying the groundwork for bigger civil rights rollbacks.
The Humane Herald 