The U.S. Supreme Court disappointed many social conservatives and American Christians by denying the opportunity to reverse its 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage. As The Washington Stand previously reported, former county clerk Kim Davis had petitioned the nation’s top court to hear her challenge against Obergefell v. Hodges, a ruling which resulted in Davis being prosecuted for her Christian beliefs on sexuality and marriage. In a list of orders released Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear Davis’s case. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the court wrote.

The Supreme Court’s nine justices met Friday to discuss whether or not to accept Davis’s case. In 2015, following the Obergefell ruling, Davis, then a clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing her Christian faith. After being held in contempt of court and even jailed for a period of five days, Davis’s office was compelled to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but Davis modified the licenses so that her name did not appear on them.

The Christian clerk was sued in federal court and both the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Davis was violating the constitutional rights of same-sex couples, averring that her own First Amendment right to freely practice her faith only protected her as a private citizen, not as a government employee. Even that protection, however, was stripped from her when Davis was sued in her personal capacity, after leaving office, and was denied immunity as a government employee. She was ordered to pay $100,000 to a group whose marriage licenses she had denied and was ordered to pay an additional $260,000 in legal fees.

Davis had petitioned the Supreme Court to hear her case, requesting that the lower courts’ rulings abrogating her First Amendment religious liberty rights be struck down and that the nation’s highest court consider reversing its own decision in Obergefell.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Chris Gacek, an attorney and the Senior Fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, said that the Obergefell ruling did not just create federal protections for same-sex marriage but “declared Christian marriage to be an unlawfully discriminatory institution.” He continued, “Even though the media reports described Mrs. Davis’s request as being focused on overturning Obergefell, there was actually a right of conscience issue that was central to this case — a much more limited concern.” Gacek added, “Since the court did not take the case, Christian clerks like Davis will apparently have no protections afforded them.”

In 2015, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, penned a dissenting opinion in the Obergefell ruling, arguing, “Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage.” Roberts continued, “And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.”

“Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening,” the chief justice wrote. “Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens — through the democratic process — to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.”

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent,” Roberts continued, decrying the majority’s opinion as an act of ideological hubris. “As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?”

Roberts further warned, a decade ago, that the Obergefell decision would risk creating an environment where courts and complainants could lawfully discriminate against and violate the First Amendment rights of those who do not recognize same-sex marriage as legitimate based upon their religious beliefs. “Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is — unlike the right imagined by the majority — actually spelled out in the Constitution,” the chief justice wrote. “The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to ‘advocate’ and ‘teach’ their views of marriage. … The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to ‘exercise’ religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.”

The Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell opinion, written by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority, “emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.” Kennedy continued, “The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.” At the end of the day, Gacek quipped, "it turns out that Justice Kennedy’s recognition of traditional Christians in Obergefell was just meaningless head-patting — void of offering any real protection."