Image via Screengrab / PBS NewsHour.
Far-right Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis made a name for herself when she refused to give a marriage license to a gay couple after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Eleven years later, she still hasn't been held accountable.
The Friendly Atheist reported on Thursday that over and over again, courts have told Davis that she must write a check to the couple for violating their civil rights. That fee began at $50,000, but it has now ballooned to more than five times that amount, and she has refused to pay it, continuing to fight the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2022, a federal judge ruled against Davis, saying that her personal beliefs do not override the law, which she swore to uphold. A jury then assessed the case for damages the following year and "eventually ruled that Davis owed David Ermold and David Moore $50,000 each," the report recalled.
Liberty Counsel takes on cases where it believes it can advance "religious freedom" laws. In Davis' case, they argued that she had "qualified immunity and couldn’t be sued." The jury didn't agree.
They appealed and failed in case after case. By that point, Davis owed “$246,026.40 in attorneys’ fees and $14,058.30 in expenses.” Davis tried to get the amount down to $100,000, but the judge wouldn't do it.
She and Liberty Counsel took the case to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. The additional litigation meant that Davis had to pay an additional $201,592.60 in attorneys’ fees.
In the end, Davis owed the couple and their lawyers $565,285.91. As of July, she has still refused to pay and is accused of hiding her inheritance money so that litigation couldn't access any of her money to pay the couple.
"They want a judge to void the transfer of Davis’ half-interest in property she inherited from her mother last year and later gave to her husband," The Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The share in her mother's home was over $400,000, but it was immediately given to her husband.
Davis swears she's broke, but the July suit called it a lie. She was asked under oath whether she transferred any property worth more than $2,000 over the previous five years. Her answer was, "no."
“That turned out to be a false statement because we have copies of the deeds by which she conveyed these properties just eight or nine months earlier,” said [Attorney Michael] Gartland.
“This is a slam dunk as far as I’m concerned,” Gartland said. “These transfers will get undone and it will be as if her brother and her own them again... we will have a lien on these three properties and we will move to settle to get our clients paid.”
Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver promised that Davis wasn't lying because she was asked about what she "owns," not what she "owned."
"It seemed pretty obvious she was deliberately lying about what she had done. And that was a problem since Kentucky has a law called the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act that says, among other things, property transfers can be voided if you were trying to hide it to avoid paying off a debt you owe," said the report from FA. "There was clear evidence that Davis hid her inheritance from the couple she owed money to, and that she transferred the land for 'no monetary consideration,' further shielding how much she was actually worth."
After that, Liberty Counsel dropped Davis as a client. On Monday, however, a judge demanded to know why Davis didn't disclose her inheritance. Liberty Counsel said they would respond to the ruling, Weka reported.
The Friendly Atheist said Davis will eventually have to pay for what she did. "Prayer ain't gonna get her out of this one," the FA wrote. The site also argued that she should be held in contempt for lying to the court.