At Least the Supreme Court Didn’t Overturn Same-Sex Marriage

The carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court declined on Friday to overturn its landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage. From The New York Times:

Gay Americans and their allies had been on alert since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority eliminated the nationwide right to abortion after 50 years, showing a willingness to undo longstanding legal precedent. In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to urge reconsideration of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Polls show that same-sex marriage now has broad public support. More than three dozen House Republicans helped pass legislation in 2022 that required states and the federal government to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages. Mary Bonauto, the lawyer who argued the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court, praised the court’s action. “Today, millions of Americans can breathe a sigh of relief for their families, current or hoped for, because all families deserve equal rights under the law,” she said in a statement.

It could be that not even this Court wanted anything to do with plaintiff Kim Davis, the kook county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples, and whose 15 minutes were up two years ago. From Slate:

Davis v. Ermold, the case that SCOTUS swatted away on Monday, was always a long-shot appeal. Many Americans likely remember the petitioner, a Kentucky clerk who refused to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple in the wake of Obergefell, citing “God’s authority.” Many may recall that she was briefly jailed in contempt of court, becoming a cause célèbre among anti-gay Republicans. But few know what happened next: One couple whom Davis discriminated against sued her for violating their civil rights, and a jury ordered her to pay $360,000 in damages in attorneys’ fees. She and her lawyers at the fringe-right law firm Liberty Counsel have spent years fighting that award. And that is what Davis v. Ermold is really about.

Maybe they’ve just looked around and decided this was one hornet’s nest they didn’t want to knock down. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett has developed a sophistic argument as to why overturning Roe v. Wade was right, but why overturning Obergefell would be wrong. It has something to do with children.) But they’ve shown a sweet tooth for the ass-backwards “religious liberty” argument on which Davis’s case depended. I’m not sure anything is safe from that.