Kim Davis has been released and returned to work after spending five days in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In the past few weeks, the country has witnessed a series of dramatic incidents regarding the high-profile and defiant Kentucky county clerk.
As an officer of the state, what Davis did was wrong. It is never a county clerk’s job to determine whether a law or a ruling is consistent with his or her conscience, nor could she question its legality. In the case of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, officers of the state should comply with the ruling and enforce it faithfully.
To put it simply, firing Davis should be enough to resolve this issue, just as if someone who does not do the job his or her boss wants them to faces the same consequence. Working for a government is not an inalienable right. If Davis is not willing to enforce the law, then she should consider opportunities in other careers.
After denying two applications to issue marriage licenses, a federal trial judge found her in a state of civil contempt and incarcerated her. He then ordered that she must not be released until she agreed to comply with the law and issue marriage licenses without adding her own requirement.
But sending Davis to jail is fundamentally wrong. Since civil contempt is not a felony, the judge should not have sent her to jail. The purpose of the incarceration is a punishment, and a coercive way to make the county clerk to comply with the law. That is overuse of the law, and judges should be cautious incarcerating litigants who are unwilling to comply with the laws due to religious reasons. When being incarcerated, they will most likely see it as a persecution and reaffirm their briefs. That decision is the worst case that a judge should avoid — leaving Kim Davis not recognizing her mistake while continuing to vow not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples under her authority. Besides a set of common duties, judges should use their decisions to persuade and educate the public about the rule of law and importance of following court orders. Unfortunately, none of these happened in this case. Davis has still earned tremendous sympathy and a variety of supporters around the nation, including some prominent Republican presidential candidates.
Not surprisingly, politicians in both parties have so far fully exploited the incident, adding significant weight to their campaigns. Republican presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio argued that the state should respect the county clerk’s religious belief. Democrats, of course, condemned the case as it clearly violated civil rights and the ruling of the Supreme Court. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, tweeted that “SCOTUS says LGBT couples can marry. Officials should uphold the law. Period.”
However, few people know that Podesta advocated that presidents should ignore Congress and create regulations to deal with climate change. What makes him think that the presidents have a God-given right to circumvent the democratic process and break the rule of law, while the county clerk should enforce the court’s orders absolutely?
There are endless examples of government officials who broke the law and did not follow court orders. President Andrew Jackson, who ignored Chief Justice John Marshall’s ruling, sent troops to force the Native Americans to abandon the Cherokee territory. Orval Faubus, former governor of Arkansas, refused to end racial segregation despite the Supreme Court ruling. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have violated the Constitution and laws without being punished in many situations. By that stand, Davis should not have been sent to jail or all the government officials refusing courts’ rulings should be incarcerated, including the presidents. In that way, the integrity of the laws is really being upheld, as Podesta advocated.
