Ten years after deciding to implement federal protections for same-sex marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court could soon be poised to reverse Obergefell v. Hodges. According to SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court’s nine justices will convene November 7, the end of next week, to discuss whether or not to hear a challenge against the 2015 ruling brought by Kim Davis, a former clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.

“As a general practice, the court does not grant review without considering a case at least two consecutive conferences; this is the first conference in which Davis’ challenge will be considered,” SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe reported. “If the justices deny review, however, that announcement could come as soon as Monday, Nov. 10.”

In 2015, Davis famously refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell mandating federal protections for same-sex marriage. Citing her Christian faith, Davis would not comply with orders to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, advising those couples instead to seek marriage licenses in neighboring counties. Eventually, Davis was held in contempt of court and jailed for a period of five days. She subsequently modified the marriage licenses issued by her office so that her name did not appear on them. “It wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Davis testified when sued in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. “It was thought out, and I sought God on it.”

Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Davis was violating the constitutional rights of same-sex couples, charging that her own First Amendment right to freely practice her faith only protected her as a private citizen, not as a government employee. “I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” Davis said at the time. She was eventually also sued in her individual capacity and was ordered to pay $100,000 to those whose marriage licenses she had denied, in addition to over $260,000 in attorneys’ fees.

In July of this year, Davis appealed to the Supreme Court, not only asking for the reversal of the lower courts’ rulings but petitioning the Supreme Court to reverse its own ruling in Obergefell. “As was predicted at the time Obergefell was decided, it ‘would threaten the religious liberty of many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman,’” Davis and her attorneys argued in their petition before the Supreme Court, citing a dissenting opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas. “Indeed, Obergefell ‘creates serious questions about religious liberty,’ and ‘people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive[d] from the majority,’” the petition continued, this time citing Chief Justice John Roberts’s own dissenting opinion in the Obergefell ruling.

“If ever there was a case of exceptional importance, 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,” the petition emphasized. “Nevertheless, the lower court held that the First Amendment provides no shield for Davis as an individual because she was originally sued as a state actor and allegedly remained a state actor — even to this day, long after she left office, and even though she was stripped of all government immunity,” it continued.

“Obergefell was wrong when it was decided and it is wrong today because it was grounded entirely on the legal fiction of substantive due process,” Davis’s plea before the court stated. Referring to the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade in 2022, another Supreme Court decision based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s “substantive due process” protections, Davis and her attorneys continued, “Obergefell was ‘egregiously wrong,’ ‘deeply damaging,’ ‘far outside the bound of any reasonable interpretation of the various constitutional provisions to which it vaguely pointed,’ and set out ‘on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.’” The petition charged, “Obergefell was not grounded in the Nation’s history or traditions, nor could it have been because it was not rooted in any Nation’s history or traditions. As Chief Justice Roberts noted, the right that Obergefell created out of whole cloth was inconsistent with ‘the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history.’”

Attorney Chris Gacek, senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand that Obergefell represents a legal discrimination against the Christian understanding of the institution of marriage. “The Supreme Court declared Christian marriage to be an unconstitutional form of discrimination in its five-to-four decision in Obergefell. Christians have to understand Obergefell in that manner, in that frame,” he said. “So, terrible consequences are going to flow downhill from this diktat re-ordering society. Kim Davis’s case is part of the collateral damage that helps to enforce the new ‘marriage’ regime. The question here is whether the Supreme Court will do nothing, find a micro solution to save Davis, or re-examine Obergefell.”

Addressing the National Conservatism Conference earlier this year, attorney Jeff Shafer, director of the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College, called for Obergefell to be reversed. “The United States Supreme Court has described the design of the fundamental human institution acknowledged across the Earth since the dawn of time, that anchors in place the public understanding of sexed human nature, as an unconstitutional form of discrimination,” he asserted. “The merciful endurance of our legal tradition is such that we’ve not yet seen the full systemic reach and realization of the anti-human and totalitarian principles embedded in Obergefell, but we’ve seen enough and otherwise can discern the trajectory that Obergefell has invited.”

“Any conservatism worthy of the name must commit itself to removing this poison from our law,” Shafer concluded.