Kim Davis must pay additional $260K to gay couple whose marriage license she denied

The former Kentucky clerk who refused to grant a couple a marriage license because they were gay must fork up another $260,000 to the attorneys of the now-husbands nearly 10 years after she denied them their right to matrimony.

Kim Davis must pay the attorney fees and expenses of the couple, David Ermold and David Moore, a federal judge ruled. That’s on top of the $100,000 a federal jury awarded the pair in September over her notorious 2015 refusal.

Davis, a Republican, spent five days in jail over her denial deemed contempt of court and was found guilty of violating the couple’s constitutional rights last year.

She was serving as the Rowan County clerk at the time that the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country.

Despite the court’s landmark decision, she refused to issue two same-sex couples marriage licenses based on her own religious beliefs. Both couples sued her.

US District Judge David Bunning — the same judge who sentenced her to jail in 2015 — ruled that the ex-clerk must pay Ermold and Moore’s legal fees because they won their lawsuit against her.

“They sought to vindicate their fundamental right to marry and obtain marriage licenses and they did so,” Bunning said of the couple, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The couple were represented by Michael Gartland, with the DelCotto Law Group in Lexington; Joseph Buckles, also a Lexington attorney; and the Public Citizens Law Group in Washington, DC.

“We got every last penny that we asked for,” Gartland told the local paper.

Liberty Counsel, a religious liberty organization representing Davis, argued that the fees were excessive before the judge’s ruling and is planning to appeal it. If the motion is denied, the group said it will then appeal the case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Last year, Bunning ruled that Davis “cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”

Davis, an evangelical Christian, said she believed marriage was only meant to be between a man and a woman. She spent five days in the slammer over what she claimed to be standing up for her beliefs — while others accused her of homophobia — and was only released after her staffers granted the couples marriage licenses while removing her name from the documents.

The case drew widespread media attention and was even parodied on an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Davis was voted out of the clerk job in 2018.

With Post wires