Former KY official who denied gay couples marriage licenses faces $360,000 payment

A former Kentucky county official who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples must pay a total of $260,104 in fees and expenses to attorneys who represented one couple, a federal judge has ruled.

That judgment against Kim Davis is in addition to a total of $100,000 in damages a jury said she should pay the couple who won a lawsuit against her.

Attorneys for Davis had argued that the fee request by the couple’s lawyers was excessive, but U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning said he disagreed.

Bunning called one claim by Davis’ lawyers exaggerated and said another “belies logic.”

Davis must pay the men’s attorneys fees and costs because they prevailed in the lawsuit, Bunning said.

“They sought to vindicate their fundamental right to marry and obtain marriage licenses,” Bunning said of the couple who won the judgment against Davis, “and they did so.”

Rowan County residents David Ermold and David Moore won the lawsuit against Davis. The jury awarded them $50,000 each.

The attorneys who represented them were Michael Gartland, with the DelCotto Law Group in Lexington; Joseph Buckles, also a Lexington attorney; and the Public Citizens Law Group in Washington, D.C., which helped argue against a request for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an earlier appeal by Davis.

The Supreme Court declined to take that appeal.

The fee awards under Bunning’s order are $175,408 for Gartland; $51,230 for Buckles; and $33,446.40 for the Washington firm. The award for expenses was $14,058.

“We got every last penny that we asked for,” Gartland said.

Davis is represented by attorneys with Liberty Counsel, which handles conservative Christian religious freedom cases. Liberty Counsel spokeswoman Holly Meade said Davis’s attorneys will appeal Bunning’s ruling.

The judgment is the latest decision in a case that started in 2015 soon after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexual couples.

Davis was county clerk in Rowan County at the time, in charge of the office that issues marriage licenses in Kentucky.

Davis, an evangelical Christian, said she believed marriage is only legitimate between a man and a woman. She said issuing a marriage license under her name to a gay couple would violate her beliefs and rights, and refused to issue licenses.

Ermold, Moore and others sued Davis.

A clerk in her office issued licenses to gay couples, and the state legislature ultimately changed the license form so that it does not include the clerk’s name.

Davis lost re-election in 2018.

The case involving Ermold and Moore and another couple, James Yates and Will Smith, has taken years to resolve because of multiple appeals of earlier rulings by Bunning.

Bunning ultimately ruled in March 2022 that Davis had violated the two couples’ rights, and said her religious belief did not justify denying licenses to gay couple.

“The question is simple — did Davis knowingly violate the law? The answer here is clear — yes,” Bunning wrote. “Ultimately, this Court’s determination is simple — Davis cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”

After that ruling, the question was whether Davis would have to pay the two couples for the emotional distress they said her actions caused them.

At a trial in September, the couples testified that Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to them amplified anti-gay bias.

Ermold told jurors he still had concerns about his safety and said the controversy exacerbated his post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I have a lot of stress and anxiety because of what happened,” he said. “Ms. Davis is responsible for humiliating us in public.”

The jury found in favor of Ermold and Moore but a separate panel ruled against damages for Yates and Smith.