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Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is facing a new lawsuit in her home turf accusing her of hiding inherited assets to avoid paying the $565,000 federal civil rights judgment against her for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
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Attorneys for the two Kentucky men whose case drew international attention after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015 filed a lawsuit in Rowan Circuit Court this month. They want a judge to void the transfer of Davis’ half-interest in property she inherited from her mother last year and later gave to her husband, son, brother and sister-in-law.
The attorneys claim Davis lied under oath about the inheritance to defraud David Ermold and David Moore of the money a federal jury awarded them in 2023.
“This is a slam dunk in any court,” said Michael Gartland, a Lexington attorney for Ermold and Moore who has represented the couple since Davis first refused to sign a license marrying them in 2015. “The minute her mother died, those properties were half hers with her brother, and that’s a problem for her.”
The lawsuit marks the latest chapter in the decade-long legal battle that began when Davis, then Rowan County clerk, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
While courts ultimately found Davis personally liable for violating the couples’ constitutional rights, the new case shifts the fight from the courtroom to her finances, alleging she deliberately transferred inherited assets to family members to shield them from collection as the plaintiffs seek to enforce the six-figure judgment.
Since a federal appeals court affirmed that judgment against Davis last year, Gartland says he and his clients haven’t received “a penny” of the damages, attorneys fees and other expenses they’re due. Instead, Davis submitted post-judgment written responses to Gartland and his co-counsel in December and January in which she claimed, under oath, that she doesn’t own or have any interest in property and that she is not the beneficiary of any trust, court records show.
While that may be true now, deeds Gartland and his co-counsel Joseph Buckles dug up in probate court and Rowan County land records reveal Davis inherited a half-share interest in her mother’s $735,230 estate in January 2025. She and her brother were appointed co-administrators of that estate a month later, and her brother executed an affidavit of descent that officially made them both 50% heirs on April 8 — exactly 33 days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s final liability and damages judgment against her.
On that same day, Kim Davis and her brother Darold Rayburn Bailey Jr. transferred a Morehead home in their mother’s estate to Bailey Jr., his wife, and Kim Davis’ husband Joe Davis, effectively writing her off of the deed, according to court records. Then, in May 2025, Kim Davis and her brother transferred a 50-acre farm parcel and a separate three-bedroom home to a trust for which her husband and son are beneficiaries.
The transfers were made for “the love and affection which the parties have for each other … and for no monetary consideration whatsoever,” but their fair cash value would have exceeded $400,000, half of which belonged to Davis, the attorneys say.
Now, they want a judge to turn back the clock on those transfers, so the federal court can place judgment liens on those properties.
“Ironically, the Rowan County Clerk’s Office held her secret that she’s lied in her discovery, and she’s transferred these properties to her brother and to a trust for her benefit and the benefit of her children,” Buckles told the Herald-Leader last week.
A drawn-out legal battle continues as plaintiffs seek original damages
Davis became a central figure in one of the nation’s most closely watched clashes between religious liberty and LBBTQ+ civil rights in 2015 when she refused to sign her name to marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
Citing her Christian faith, she directed her office to stop issuing marriage licenses to all couples rather than comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Ultimately four couples — two same-sex and two opposite-sex — sued in federal court, arguing Davis had violated their constitutional rights. When a judge ordered Davis to issue the licenses, she refused, was found in contempt of court and jailed for five days.
Kentucky lawmakers altered the state’s marriage license forms to remove county clerks’ names, a compromise Davis accepted, but the litigation against her continued for years. She went on to lose two separate federal civil rights cases and has racked up a bill of $565,285.91 she owes the plaintiffs.
Amid the legal controversy, Kim Davis lost her bid for reelection in 2018 to Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr., ending 40 years of a Davis at the helm of the county clerk’s office. Her mother Norma Jean Withrow Bailey served for 37 years before retiring in 2014.
Davis appealed the verdicts, arguing that she was entitled to qualified immunity and that holding her personally liable violated her religious freedom. Those arguments were rejected by a federal appeals court last year, and the U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear the case on appeal, leaving the judgments intact.
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“This is the best fraudulent transfer case I’ve ever dealt with. … It’s just — it’s just that simple; it’s open and shut.”
Michael Gartland
Lexington attorney
More than a decade after she first refused to issue marriage licenses, Davis still remains embroiled in litigation — not over whether she violated the couples’ rights, a question largely settled by the courts — but now over whether she has taken improper steps to avoid paying the judgments entered against her.
In her sworn post-judgment written testimony in December, Davis said she wasn’t aware of any copies of her book, “Under God’s Authority: The Kim Davis Story” that had been sold or published within the last three years.
Her only other source of revenue was a pension that afforded her $5,298 a month, but retirement plans are generally shielded from civil judgments under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Her monthly income is deposited in a bank account she maintains out of state, which Gartland said would make it more difficult for a Kentucky court to issue a bank levy against her.
She closed a bank account she maintained in Grayson a year after lower court judgment against her, according to court documents.
“This is our best chance to get money,” Gartland said. “This is the best fraudulent transfer case I’ve ever dealt with.
“It’s just — it’s just that simple; it’s open and shut,” he added.
Davis’ defense says she answered specific questions with specific answers
Not so fast, says Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit, Christian strategic litigation firm that has defended Davis since she first took a stand against gay marriage in 2015. Staver said Gartland and Buckles should be cautious about throwing around words like “lie” without evidence.
“She did not lie,” Staver said. “They asked a specific question, and she answered it exactly, truthfully the way they had asked it.”
The attorneys asked Davis to “identify each property you own, or in which you have an interest,” not the past-tense “owned,” according to a transcript of the December post-judgment discovery documents. The attorneys also used the present-tense when they asked about which trusts she is a beneficiary.
But later, the attorneys asked her to identify “each transfer, including gifts, of funds and other assets that you have made in the past five years” of $2,000 in aggregate or more during a one-year period, excluding payments made to credit card companies or mortgage holders.
In December, Davis said she had made no such transfers, according to the lawsuit the attorneys filed. In January, however, she said she had transferred value in excess of $1,000 in the assumption of debt by a family member.
Technically, no money changed hands when Davis and her brother transferred their inherited property to her family members, but it’s unclear whether that is the defense she will use.
Regardless, Davis was fulfilling her mother’s wishes when she made those transfers, Staver told the Herald-Leader. That was not reflected in a will, however, according to probate court documents.
Kentucky’s Uniform Voidable Transactions Act gives courts the authority void the transfer of property when that transfer was made as part of an effort to “hinder, delay, or defraud any creditor of the debtor” or “without receiving reasonably equivalent value in exchange for the transfer” when the debtor engaged in business that left their remaining assets “unreasonably small” or with debts beyond their ability to pay.
By concealing her inheritance in the post-judgment discovery and transferring her mother’s property for “no monetary consideration” Davis satisfied both tests under the law, said Gartland.
“Thank God the public records exist, because you don’t know what you don’t know,” Buckles added.
Ermold and Moore are tired of this drawn-out process, he said.
“They’re not out for vengeance, but, I mean, they have been seriously harmed by this,” he said. “Additionally, you know, there’s substantial attorney’s fees, and they’ve gone through a lot pursuing this case.”
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