The US Supreme Court has decided not to reconsider its ten-year-old decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
Judges rejected an appeal by Kim Davis, who was ordered by a lower court to pay compensation to a same-sex couple after refusing to issue them a marriage license.
Ms Davis argued that same-sex marriage was contrary to her beliefs as an apostolic Christian.
The 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was a historic victory for LGBT rights in the United States, but some conservatives argue it dealt a blow to religious freedom.
Davis is appealing a civil rights lawsuit brought by David Ermold and David Moore, a couple who accused her of violating their constitutional right to marry.
“To me, that would be an act of disobedience to God,” she said at the time.
In 2022, federal Judge David Banning rejected Davis's argument that her constitutionally guaranteed religious beliefs shielded her from liability in the case.
“Davis cannot use his own constitutional rights as cover for violating the constitutional rights of others in the performance of his duties as an elected official,” Bunning wrote.
The Rowan County clerk was ultimately ordered to pay $360,000 (£274,000) in damages and served six days in jail for contempt of court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, also ruled against her.
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, Davis' legal team argued that the right to same-sex marriage was based on a “legal fiction.”
On Monday, Davis' lawyer, Mat Staver of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, said his client “now faces significant monetary damages based on nothing more than a perceived grievance,” the newspaper reported. Lexington Herald Leader newspaper.
The Trump administration has not commented on her case while it waits to see whether the nation's top arbitrator will hear the appeal.
Some conservatives had hoped the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, would return to the issue of same-sex marriage after the justices struck down longstanding abortion rights in 2023.
In Obergefell v. Hodges, Anthony Kennedy, a retired conservative justice, sided with four liberal justices.
Kennedy wrote in his decision 10 years ago that gays hoping to marry “should not be condemned to live alone, excluded from one of the oldest institutions of civilization.”
“They demand equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution gives them this right.”
Three of the four conservative justices who dissented in the case still serve on the court.
One of them, Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote in his dissent at the time: “Today, five lawyers ordered every state to change its definition of marriage. Who do we think we are?”
