Federal judge orders state of Kentucky to pay legal fees in case against Kim Davis

A federal judge has ordered the state of Kentucky to pay over $220,000 in legal fees to the attorneys of the same-sex couples who sued Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered the state to pay the legal fees, rather than Davis, saying the clerk was acting in her official capacity when she stopped issuing marriage licenses in 2015. Bunning also noted that the state was held liable rather than Rowan County because the state is primarily responsible for regulating marriage, USA Today reported.

"[W]hen Davis made the unilateral decision to adopt a 'no marriage licenses' policy, she was acting as an agent of the Commonwealth, not Rowan County. Therefore, Rowan County is not liable for Davis's actions or Plaintiffs' attorneys' fees," Bunning wrote.

"Davis represented the Commonwealth of Kentucky when she refused to issue marriage licenses to legally eligible couples. The buck stops there," the judge added.

The judge ordered the state to pay $222,695 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys who worked on the cases and another $2,008 in costs.

Davis gained national attention after the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling on June 26, 2015, when she decided not to issue marriage licenses to either homosexual or heterosexual couples. She said that she would only issue the licenses if her name was removed from the documents.

Her refusal led to three lawsuits — Miller v. Davis, Ermold v. Davis and Yates v. Davis — filed by couples who were turned down when they sought to get a license from Davis' office.

She was jailed briefly in August that year after she refused to comply with a court order telling her to issue marriage licenses.

The cases against Davis were dismissed by Bunning after Gov. Matt Bevin issued an executive order removing the names of the clerks from the licenses in December 2015.

The plaintiffs soon filed a motion requesting to be granted attorney's fees and cost, but earlier this year, a magistrate denied their request, arguing that they were not the "prevailing parties" in the case against Davis.

"This voluntary conduct by the state changing the marriage license forms so that the county clerk, Kim Davis, was no longer required to sign the license, does not signal that the plaintiffs prevailed in the action, and cannot serve as the basis for an award of attorney's fees," U.S. District Judge Edward Atkins wrote, according to Christian News Network.

On Friday, Bunning rejected Atkins' recommendation, arguing that the plaintiffs "won the war" because they got an injunction requiring Davis' office to issue the marriage licenses again.

Woody Maglinger, a spokesman for Bevin, said that the state's outside counsel is still studying Bunning's ruling and that no decision has been made whether to try to reverse it.