Kentucky clerk Kim Davis continued to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples Thursday despite a ruling from a U.S. district judge that said she had to.
Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, says her religious beliefs prevent her from issuing the licenses, but U.S. District Judge David Bunning issued a preliminary injunction against Davis Wednesday on behalf of four same-sex couples in the county who had
applied for the licenses, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Roger Gannam, Davis' attorney, said he quickly filed an appeal and will ask Bunning to stay the injunction until U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has a chance to take up the case. In the meantime, Davis continues to refuse to issue the licenses to gay couples.
Indeed, Rowan County deputy clerk Nathan Davis told David Moore and David Ermold that he would not issue them a marriage license Thursday, a day after Bunning's ruling, the Herald-Leader reported.
"Kim Davis is resolute in vindicating her rights," Gannam, a senior litigation counsel at Liberty Counsel, a religious advocacy group, told the Herald-Leader. "Fundamentally, we disagree with this order because the government should never be able to compel a person to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs."
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage, allowing same-sex couples to marry legally for the
first time nationwide, The New York Times reported.
In his ruling, Bunning wrote that Davis' issuing of marriage licenses to same-sex couples had no bearing on her religious convictions and was simply a legal task
required by her position, according the Louisville Courier-Journal.
"She may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible study and minister to female inmates at the Rowan County jail," Bunning wrote. "She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do. However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County clerk."
Dan Canon, an attorney for the Rowan County couples, said that the ruling "reaffirms the idea that we've been trying to stress all along, which is that individual elected officials are not allowed to govern according to their own private religious beliefs."
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