Kim Davis (top center), the Rowan County clerk in Kentucky, attended the 2016 State of the Union address.

The Supreme Court is debating taking up a case challenging the decade-old decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

The deliberations on Friday, Nov. 7, were closed-door, but the court could announce its decision to take up the case as early as Monday.

The case centers on former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who who appealed to the high court after she was ordered to pay a gay couple $100,000 for refusing to marry them in 2015. She argued that presiding over the marriage would violate her religious beliefs.

Davis, who served as clerk in Rowan County at the time, drew international attention when she refused to issue a marriage license to David Ermold and David Moore in the wake of the court's ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. That case was known as Obergefell v. Hodges.

Some conservatives are hoping the justices will revisit the question now that the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, undoing a 50-year legal precedent and effectively turning questions about abortion access back to the states.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's most conservative justices, wrote the majority opinion that undid Roe v. Wade. But Alito has given no indication he is inclined to do the same in the Davis case.

After criticizing the decision that legalized same-sex marriage, Alito recently clarified his stance. "I am not suggesting that the decision in that case should be overruled," he said at an event organized by the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State on Oct. 3. "I have to state that so that what I say today is not misunderstood."

Same-sex couples and others in the LGBTQ+ community are watching the court closely, worried that their right to marry could be curtailed or their marriage made null.

Emillie Friedman married her wife, Brooke Friedman, in October 2024 after three years together. The Davis appeal shocked and worried her, especially because the two plan on starting a family, she said. But she remains hopeful.

"Nothing is going to change the fact that Brooke and I are legally married," she told USA TODAY. "We are married in our hearts."

If the court takes up the Davis case and overturns precedent, same-sex marriages could still remain protected.

In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, which protects same-sex and interracial marriages at the federal level.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gay marriage at the Supreme Court? Justices weigh revisiting landmark issue

Reporting by Lauren Villagran, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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