A new lawsuit filed this month accuses former county clerk Kim Davis of deliberately transferring more than $400,000 of land to family members to avoid paying $565,000 awarded to same-sex couple, David Ermold and David Moore, for illegally denying them marriage licenses.
Davis denied admission of the licenses to same-sex couples in 2015, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruled same-sex marriage legal nationwide. Davis is a self-described conservative Christian who herself has been married four times, reports LGBTQ Nation. She initially told the couple that she was acting “under God’s authority” when she refused to issue the license because she believes marriage is only between a man and a woman.
“Davis — who was pregnant by her third husband while still married to her first — was represented by the anti-LGBTQ+ Liberty Counsel, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated hate group that opposes any expansion of LGBTQ+ civil rights,” said reporter Daniel Villarreal. The Liberty Counsel has claimed that the LGBTQ+ [community] … seeks to ‘indoctrinate’ kids and society at large to embrace and reward ‘perversion’ and ‘harmful sexual behavior.’ The Liberty Counsel also says same-sex marriage causes disease and destroys ‘our very social fabric,’ and describes the community as ‘immoral’ and ‘unnatural,’ the SLPC noted.
The couple sued Davis and won their federal civil rights lawsuit in 2023, reported Villarreal. A judge ruled that Davis “cannot use her own constitutional rights [to religious freedom] as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”
Then, in January 2024, a judge ruled Daivs must also pay $260,000 in legal fees to a couple she denied a license to.
But Ermold and Moore’s attorneys say that after her mother died in 2025, Davis inherited three parcels of land worth more than $400,000 and then transferred the property’s deeds to other family members in order to conceal her assets and avoid having to liquidate them to pay the same-sex couple, reported Villarreal.
“[Plaintiff] attorney Michael J. Gartland said a fraudulent conveyance statute prohibits defendants from transferring property to avoid paying existing claims, reports Villarreal. “As such, the plaintiffs’ lawsuit has asked a judge to void the property transfers, block further movement of assets, and have estate funds calculated as part of the payment she owes to the couple.”
Villarreal reports then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) initially praised Davis as “an inspiration… to the children of America,” but when the court said the state government would have to pay for her legal fees, Bevin appealed to get Davis to pay the fees instead.