Not really. You can see a copy of the form on page 34 of this PDF (the third party complaint filed by Davis’ attorneys). They could probably just as easily put “Clerk of County Court” as Davis’ name in there.
It’s the little details that make the story.
Sanctity of marriage, indeed!
Did anything like this happen 50-odd years ago, with a county clerk refusing to issue a marriage license to a black man and a white woman (or any other mixed race couple) after SCOTUS decided Loving v Virginia?
Yep. Most are probably lost to history, but a probate judge in Alabama refused to issue a license to an interracial couple in 1968 or 1969. That couple wound up obtaining a license in another state, but the US Attorney General’s office pursued a declaratory action and won.
The math doesn’t indicate anything so dire.
The first marriage numbers Google spat out included around 33,400 marriages in the entire state of Kentucky for the year 2009. (pdf link)
At about 250 working days per year that would make for 133 per day if all the marriages for the entire state took place in one county. Obviously they don’t.
Jefferson County Kentucky (location of Louisville) is the most populous in the state of Kentucky with a 2009 population of 721,594 out of a total state population of 4,317,000. That means Jefferson County makes up 16.7% of the state’s population.
So if marriage license applications in Jefferson County were in proportion to it’s population in the state then only about 22 marriage licenses would be processed on an average work day. Easy enough for one person to sign them all.
And less populous counties would have perhaps a handful of marriage licenses per day.
I wonder what the public outcry on that was.
Is that a joke? Read Huckleberry Finn sometime.
Good catch. It would still be an odd requirement, though. What happens if the clerk is out sick? No license for you! And you couldn’t go to a satellite office if you lived in a large county, you’d have to go to the county courthouse.
Contemporary accounts suggest that Judge Brittain (Alabama probate judges serve the same function that clerks of court do in other states) was locally lauded as a hero. Interracial marriage was more controversial back then than gay marriage is now, from all appearances. I mean, it’s not as though people are firebombing the homes of gay couples.
It’s even less dire in Rowan County, which only has a population of 23K. The math works out to less than one per day, and it’s almost certainly even less than that, since 44% of the population is age 24 or under.
On the other hand, there is a couple in Rowan County who want to marry and are being denied their constitutional right to do so. That’s plenty dire.
There are four actually. Two same sex and two opposite sex.
Just correcting this for accuracy sake (absolutely not defending Davis, who I detest and think needs punished / removed), but none of the couples in Rowan County are unable to marry. They’re unable to get a marriage license from the Rowan County Clerk. However they, as Kentucky residents, can get licenses from any Kentucky County and then are allowed to hold the ceremony anywhere in the State they wish (including Rowan County.)
The actual power of the clerk to stop a marriage in the county is essentially none, her one power she can wield here is refusing to grant a license, but there are other places people can get a license. The license is good state wide, and so is the marriage, she’s just forcing people to leave the county to get them. I believe several couples have done just this–gone to another county to get their license.
The ones who haven’t are taking a stand for what they believe in at the cost of delaying their own marriages, because they know that if everyone took the easy way out Davis would essentially “win.” She wouldn’t be stopping anyone from getting married, but she’d be “winning” in that she got away with her bullshit. So instead they’re suing her ass–because that bitch doesn’t get to win. I’m glad there are people willing to inconvenience themselves to see the idiot punished.
Adding a link here for Jefferson County Kentucky that explains the marriage license process in Kentucky.
Why doesn’t the judge just fire her?
: flees :
Seriously though, why not toss the dumb bitch in jail for contempt of court? The judge said “Do your job” and she said “I won’t, so up yours.” Clear, obvious contempt.
Never been around union members, I take it?
ETA: I see others have already pointed this kind of thing out.
I don’t understand people saying fines don’t matter. Fine her $1000 for the first day following the court order that she refuses to issue a licence and make the fine for each subsequent day twice that of the previous day. She’ll be fine with social media fundraising for a week or two, and then she’ll be in deep shit. Even if you didn’t double the fine each day, people will only continue donating for so long. If you really want her to do jail time, wait until she’s no longer a cause celebre and the fines have outstripped her ability to pay and arrest her for nonpayment. “County Clerk Arrested For Nonpayment Of Fines” isn’t nearly as sexy a headline as “County Clerk Arrested For Refusing To Violate Religious Beliefs.” Even her supporters won’t care at that point.
Then you haven’t spent much time around the more fundamentalist type of Christian. Having been raised by Baptists I can affirm it is very common to refer to one another as being “brothers or sisters in Christ”. It’s based on some verse or other in the New Testament but I can’t be bothered to look it up at the moment.
Imposition of punishingly exhorbitant fines may not be within the discretion of the Court for the case. But using your example, say it’s a fixed fine of a thou a day, I would not be amazed at all if she can crowdsource $366K to keep covering such a fine for the first year.
The normal honorable and civil thing to do for someone in her situation or similar (and for the assistant clerks who agree with her) is to say “I am impeded by my conscience from performing this task, and the Court’s order places me in an intolerable situation; therefore I hereby resign this post”. The requirement that elected officials must be impeached is so people will get a due process and not get fired for petty politics, not to entitle them to collect a salary to do what they wish. The expectation is that if you become an embarassment you will remove yourself.
OTOH the Kentucky provision that her impeachment be handled by a Legislature that only meets the first 60 days of the year needs reviewing, if you’re in a year-round office you need a year-round disciplinary body. (Of course that a County Clerk is an elected office strikes me as itself mighty silly to begin with, but hey, that’s just my bias at seeing it as a, well, clerical and *not policymaking position. If a job is certifying “yes these papers are legit as far as I can verify, have been properly completed, the supporting documents are in order, the people who signed it have provided evidence that they are eligible to do so and properly identified themselves, and the fees have been paid”, that’s a small-c-*clerk, a glorified notary public. IMO. Why should they be elected?)
It doesn’t help that Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin is supporting her actions, or that the obnoxious “First Amendment Defense Act” is being pushed harder than ever in Congress.
Do we know if the couple is from Rowan County, or if are they activists from elsewhere, seeking attention?