The Supreme Court has been officially called on to reconsider its landmark ruling, which legalized gay marriage nationwide more than a decade ago.
At the center of the case is the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
The long-shot request was made by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who gained notoriety after she was jailed for refusing marriage licenses in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.
She was sued by a gay couple and ordered to pay $100,000 in emotional damages, plus $260,000 for attorneys’ fees.
“If there ever was a case of exceptional importance,” her lawyer Matthew Staver wrote, “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.”
In her petition to the Supreme Court, Davis argues that Obergefell was based on a “legal fiction.”
She asserts that it has eroded the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom.
“The damage done by Obergefell’s distortion of the Constitution is reason enough to overturn this opinion and reaffirm the rule of law and the proper role of this Court,” the petition says.
The appeal quotes from the conservative justices, who warned at the time