Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis Released from Jail (VIDEO)

I'm not all that passionate about this story. It's hardly the hill to die on, IMHO.

She's a public official, an elected one at that, and it seems like her responsibility would be to respect the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. Sure, her religious liberties are implicated, but cases in which it's a private party seeking religious exceptions are certainly on firmer ground.

In any case, at the Louisville Courier-Journal, "Kim Davis released from jail; she must allow licenses":

Ending a constitutional standoff, at least for now, a federal judge Monday ordered Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis released from jail – but on the condition she doesn’t interfere with her deputies issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents four couples who sued her, said its goal has been achieved.

“This case was brought to ensure that all residents of Rowan County, gay and straight, could obtain marriage licenses,” William Sharp, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said in a news release.

But Davis’ lawyers at Liberty Counsel declined to say if she would comply with U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s order that she shall not meddle, “directly or indirectly,” with giving licenses to “all legally eligible couples.”

Roger Gannam, one of her lawyers, said she will still seek an accommodation from Gov. Steve Beshear and the courts to protect her religious liberty, and Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Orlando-based Christian legal ministry, said i it would continue to pursue the multiple appeals she has filed.

“Be assured that Kim Davis hasn’t changed her mind and hasn’t changed her conscience,” Gannam told Yahoo News in a live interview.

Staver, in a statement, said: “We are pleased that Kim Davis has been ordered released” but "she can never recover the past six days of her life spent in an isolated jail cell like a common criminal because of her conscience and religious convictions.”

Bunning, who jailed Davis Thursday for refusing to comply with his order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, said in a two-page order that he was letting her out because he’d been assured her deputies were doing so.

"The court is therefore satisfied that the Rowan County Clerk’s Office is fulfilling its obligation to issue marriage licenses…consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Obergefell and this court’s August 12 order,” he wrote. “For these reasons, the Court’s prior contempt sanction against Defendant Davis is hereby lifted."
More.

And at Althouse, where she has the link to Rasmussen's poll, "'Voters Show Little Sympathy for Jailed Clerk in Gay Marriage Spat'." (Via Memeorandum.)

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