According to CNN, Kentucky Rowan County clerk Kim Davis has been released from jail, with the proviso that she not interfere with clerks in her office issuing marriage licenses. It’s not yet clear whether her name will still appear on the licenses, but it seems that that will remain unless and until the legislature changes the rules in January.
A long and complicated analysis by Eugene Volokh (a UCLA law professor) at the Washington Post concludes that Davis probably is legally exusable from signing licenses based on Kentucky’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It’s complicated, and apparently comes down to whether religious beliefs can be accommodated without undue hardship to the employer. But Davis is back at work, and remains a religious bigot.
The critical issue here is whether or not she’s going to prevent the clerks under her from issuing marriage licenses, which is what specifically got her thrown into the hoosegow in the first place. She had defiantly insisted she would prevent them.
This means she backed down, regardless of how the religious right tries to turn this into a victory.
Yeah. You can guarantee that’s not the way it’ll be portrayed by her supporters though. She’ll become an icon for the religious right.
I wonder if she’s now going to change her allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican party given that she’s had so much support from the GOP and their presidential candidates? And will she be elected again?
I thought the judge had made that offer in the beginning and she would not agree to the non-interference requirement. Brings bigotry to the next level.
yep
The religious bigots (her supporters) may interpret this as a victory.
Of course they will.
That’s fine. I’m even glad she’s out of jail. I really don’t care about punishing Kim Davis, I care about whether the people of her district get the governmental functions they have a right to get.
She needs to be a martyr…..might she proceed to fire every one of her clerks, except for her son, to prevent any business being conducted in the court house. That would land her right back in the slammer, something she actively seeks?
Wouldn’t that be a slam-dunk for re-instatement under unfair dismissal laws. With damages.
Well that depends on Kentucky law dealing with County Clerk staff (remember a lot of laws do not cover government employees). I did a look and assuming the deputies are “classified employees” and beyond the probation period then they can only be fired for cause. Admittedly cause can include not obeying an order. However given the deputies have a direct order from a judge they should be fairly safe.
But Wotshername is the elected County Clerk, not an employed deputy. Isn’t she? Or have I misunderstood the situation. (I’m baffled by which laws you have to obey being affected by your employment status.)
Erp was talking about the people working under / for Wotshername. Wotshername is an elected official, the poor slubs working for her are county employees.
so the judge lost face in that pointless contest?
the law loses and religion wins?
How do you make it out that the judge lost face? Presumably, Kim Davis has complied with his direction not to interfere with her clerks issuing licences. If she does, he can throw her back in the slammer.
cr
she was ordered to issue licenses or quit.
she offered that willing to issue without imprint, which is not a legal issuing
so the compromise of she doesn’t issue them and can’t prevent them being issued means she in at work and not doing her job.
so she wins and gets hailed a martyr hero and GROTESQUELY compares herself to Martin Luther King Jr.
I agree. This is not the best outcome. In these specific circumstances there should not be any accommodation, in my opinion. She should be required to issue licenses to everyone without qualification, personally and by delegation, or resign from public service.
yes. they should have put her on admin leave at home and left her there. that way taxpayers were no needlessly out of pocket and she couldn’t have cried martyr or claim this victory – it’s like they are tying to give her a case to get religion over law
I still don’t see that the judge lost face. His concern in the matter was to see that licences were legally issued, not adjudicate on employment matters (i.e. whether Kim Davis was doing the job she’s paid to do). That’s between Kim Davis and her employers, or maybe for an employment court in the future.
Kim Davis can try and spin it any way she wants – but she backed down.
cr
All of the so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” are blatantly unconstitutional. Any suggestions as to how to get legal standing to challenge them?
That’s what I’d like to know. This does open up the opportunity for others to deny services based on their religious beliefs. This isn’t about her ‘going against her god’, it’s about using religious self-righteousness to justify bigotry. She didn’t seem to be too worried about that during her four marriages and affairs.
Oh, but she had a “re-awakening” since her last divorce and jay-sus forgives her! Well, apparently he forgives her as long as her name doesn’t appear on any marriage licenses for gay people. But the jeezus next door says gay marriage is ok, and being mean is bad. But the geez-us across the street says they’re both wrong and that everyone’s going to hell because everyone who is going to be saved arrived in heaven centuries ago and they’re not accepting any more immigrants. And so it goes.
Jeezus!
I wonder what the FFRF has to say about this?
How Dreadful. Now we encourage them all.
I was pissed to hear about this at first. But as I’ve thought more on it, this is perhaps a wise move on part of the judge.
This is no longer about a stubborn Christian being held in contempt for failing to follow the court’s orders by issuing same-sex marriage licenses. But instead is the case of the same stubborn Christian being ordered by the court not to get in the way of other clerks at the office who are content with issuing same-sex marriage licenses.
She’s no longer being made by the court to do something she finds irreconcilable with her religious beliefs, but being ordered to stay out of the way of those who don’t.
This takes the wind out of the sail of the Conservative Christian movement who’re trying to rally around ‘Christian persecution’.
So when she breaks these court orders, which she most likely will, it will be much more difficult for religious people to play the ‘persecuted Christian’ card.
… not that that difficulty will even slow them down.
Yeah, I’m with Aidan. They won’t be slowed down at all. If reasonableness prevailed, sure. But it doesn’t. Christians need a little persecution. Translated into standard English that means, “Christians need to be held to the same legal and ethical standards as everyone else.”
From what I’ve read, her name is still on the forms. So because the forms have her name on them she is planning on interfering with having them handed out.
I wonder if there are any atheists who refuse to issue a 501c3 status to churches?
I work at a county courthouse in Florida, in the Probate & Guardianship Department, and I regularly handle wills in which the decedents leave a sizeable portion of their estate to their favorite churches. Heck, last year I even handled a case in which the John Birch Society was a beneficiary — and someone from the JBS actually called to talk with me about the case. I was entirely civil and courteous and did my job without giving any indication that I regard their organization as asinine and loathsome.
Scary. Where does all the money go when the Koch brothers die? Probably not to Americans United.
With the Birchers, it probably goes to anti-fluoridation campaigns.
Scary thing is, 50 years after William F. Buckley, Jr., read them out of the emerging conservative coalition, the JBS is now back in the Republican mainstream. Disgusting.
Actually her name isn’t on the licenses the deputies have been issuing (or at least some of them). They put the county name instead (the wording is “in the office of X, Y county”) and as usual put on the next line the name and signature of the actual certifying clerk (in this case one of the deputies).
I think it was a brilliant move by the judge. From what I read here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/08/4025586_marriage-licenses-issued-friday.html?rh=1
her name is off the license. So now she can’t use that excuse anymore.
They removed the name and just put: “in the office of Rowan County, Rowan County County Clerk.”
That’s a bit like making sure you don’t use the correct moniker when praying to the almighty.
Thiscame over the Daily Kos feed today, and I thought it apropos. Well played President Bartlet! I always loved the West Wing.
So she must have agreed to do the heinous thing she so adamantly refused to do before? We’ll have to see how this plays out. Unfortunately, you give these religious bigots an inch, they will try to take a mile. I’m sure this is far from over. I wonder how long before she is back in the slammer for refusing to allow her clerks to issue marriage licenses? And what will her devout supporters think of that? I hope there are a few more couples in Rowan County ready to tie the knot and give this a test.
We have the same issue in the Netherlands and the solution is to have at least one clerk at every town hall who is willing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
I guess everyone is happy this way, but I find this way of reasoning problematic, because it potentially opens the floodgates and allow all civil servants to choose which portion of the law they want to execute. Surely, if you allow one civil servant to cherry pick, you should allow the others to cherry pick as well. So why have laws at all?
On the plus side, we would no longer need politicians.
The issue here seems to be that she’s the head clerk of the county, which is an elected position, which I think means that she can’t be fired (just someone else elected against her) AND she’s preventing her under-clerks from doing their jobs.
In that case it’s a clear-cut case. She ought to be fired.
Like I said, I’m not sure that a mechanism exists for her to be fired, as she achieved her position by being elected, not by being appointed.
But the details probably vary at least at the state level and possibly at a finer level of subdivision. Foreign legal systems are a nightmare at the best of times.
In the Land of Clogs’n’Tulips, is your legal system based on the Napoleonic codes, or something different?
In Kentucky, she can be impeached and convicted to be removed from office but that is unlikely to happen.
Ah, the Clinton-Nixon Manoeuvre!
The dutch legal system is based on the napoleonic codes and perfected over 200 years through rampant opportunism by every party that happened to be power.
“perfected” … I’m sure it is perfect.
I’m just thankful that we haven’t (yet) had Sarah Pee weighing in…
She’s been too busy gushing over the Donald. (I want to call him the Trumpet, but that’s not nice to Ben Goren!)
How ’bout The Kazoo?🎴
The Bronx Cheer …
🍓 ( as close to a raspberry as I could find;-)
Sorry, that’s more of a rug burn.
(Well, he does have sort of a rug…)
Odd. What about here son, and her influence on him doing the same refusal?
“her” son.
So far, from what I’ve seen, the licences are being handed out. Whether her son is involved I don’t know, but someone is handing out licenses.
I read that all the other officers are handing out marriage licenses to gays, except her son.
She came out to the Rocky Theme yeah.She needs to cut her hair. CNN is on this now 24-7 so boring and she needs to cut her hair.
She can’t cut her hair. That is one of the tenets of her Apostolic Christianity. Women have to have long hair & wear long skirts. Modesty you know! That’s an lolz in her case!
As the Good Book states somewhere to the effect, “A woman’s hair is her glory.”
So, since you mention it, what hair style would you recommend for her?
Kind of a butch cut would be super cool.
Kim Davis resembles nothing so much as “Julia” from Lord Byron’s Don Juan, who all the while insisting “‘I will ne’er consent’ — consented.”
(Given that this ambiguous consent runs afoul of current campus sex codes, Don Juan is likely no longer taught in the classroom, or else is so far plastered under Trigger Warnings as to be indecipherable.)
Marriage won:
“This case was brought to ensure that all residents of Rowan County…could obtain marriage licenses. That goal has been achieved,” — ACLU
Facts on the ground.
Once folks are married and the parade of horribles don’t happen, most folks will come around, just like they did with mixed marriages.
There are 5 deputy clerks issuing certificates. If she gets in their way, she goes back to jail. Keep your eyes on the goal. Making Davis miserable is irrelevant. Doing the minimum to ensure the rule of law will neuter religious discrimination “war on Christians” nonsense.
Undue hardship yo the employer? The employer in this case is the state and that is funded by the citizens. What possible “hardship” could befall such an employer outside of the fact that citizens can’t have their legal rights upheld? There’s certainly no goods or money or profit to be considered here.
The more I read about this case and the lawyers in question, the more convinced I am that this woman is a pawn in the hands of right wing organisations, rather than being in charge of her own destiny. There is far too much of what her lawyer is going to do, instead of what she intends to do. I expect that in 5 years time she will be broke, unemployed, divorced for a 4th time, and generally feeling hard done by.
Listening to her recorded voice, I think she’s a true believer and happy to play the part of a vector.
I am sure she is, but I am also sure she’s being exploited by unscrupulous people.
This is perhaps a silly question, but is there no issue regarding nepotism in the public service in Kentucky or the USA more generally. Given the statement that Ms Davis’ mother preceded her as county clerk, and her son works as a deputy (and is perhaps being groomed to succeed her), it sounds rather like a small scale dynasty.
sub
In all probability she will get re-elected with an increased Majority. ah well , such are the Trials of Life.
Here’s my take:
The judge did the right this in jailing her. This sends the signal to all that, similar to the civil rights laws in the 1960s, they are not going to take no for an answer.
The clerk got to make her little demonstration.
The judge let her out — he doesn’t want to appear oppressive — with a promsie to not interfere. Now she will simmer down and let the county go about its business. (Or else she’ll be back in jail.)
The gay folk applying for licenses were unfortunately inconvenienced for a time; but that is now finished.
And all other obstructionists should take note.