Deborah Louise Cook is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Akron, Ohio. She served as a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court from 1995 to 2003.
Jeffrey Stuart Sutton is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Jordan Palmer is an American social activist, Kentucky politician, civil rights activist, entrepreneur, and the founder of the Kentucky Equality Federation. Palmer is from Hazard, Kentucky and is credited for having Kentucky Constitutional Amendment 1, being struck down by a Kentucky judge, pushing the first hate crime convictions under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and holding the first equality protests against a sitting governor and members of the Kentucky House of Representatives. Palmer was the first openly gay person to run for the Kentucky Senate.
Anna Katherine Diggs Taylor was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Jennifer Walker Elrod is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit since 2007. She previously served as a state court judge on the 190th District Court of Texas from 2002 to 2007.
Martha Craig "Cissy" Daughtrey is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Callie Virginia Granade is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. The first female federal prosecutor in Mobile, Granade became the first woman in Alabama to be named a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the first female federal district judge in her district.
Barrington Daniels Parker was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Amul Roger Thapar is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He was also President Trump's first Court of Appeals appointment and Trump's second judicial appointment after Justice Neil Gorsuch. Thapar was discussed as a candidate for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Timothy Seymour Black is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. commonwealth of Kentucky still face some legal challenges not experienced by other people. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in Kentucky, although the state legislature has not repealed its sodomy statute for same-sex couples. Same sex-marriage is legal in the Kentucky under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The decision, which struck down Kentucky's statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriages, and all other same sex marriage bans elsewhere in the country, was handed down on June 26, 2015.
The lead cases on same-sex marriage in Kentucky are Bourke v. Beshear, and its companion case Love v. Beshear. In Bourke, a U.S. district court found that the Equal Protection Clause requires Kentucky to recognize valid same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. In Love, the same court found that this same clause renders Kentucky's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Both decisions were stayed and consolidated upon appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments in both cases on August 6, 2014. On November 6, the Sixth Circuit upheld Kentucky's ban on same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Kentucky since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015. The decision, which struck down Kentucky's statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriages, was handed down on June 26, 2015, and Governor Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway announced almost immediately that the court's order would be implemented.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The 5–4 ruling requires all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the Insular Areas to perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples, with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities. Prior to Obergefell, same-sex marriage had already been established by statute, court ruling, or voter initiative in thirty-six states, the District of Columbia, and Guam.
In the United States, the history of same-sex marriage dates from the early 1940s, when the first lawsuits seeking legal recognition of same-sex relationships brought the question of civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples to public attention though they proved unsuccessful. However marriage wasn't a request for the LGBTQ movement until the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington (1987). The subject became increasingly prominent in U.S. politics following the 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in Baehr v. Miike that suggested the possibility that the state's prohibition might be unconstitutional. That decision was met by actions at both the federal and state level to restrict marriage to male-female couples, notably the enactment at the federal level of the Defense of Marriage Act.
John Gilpin Heyburn II was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Heyburn served as the Chief Judge of the Court between 2001 and 2008.
Kimberly Jean Davis is an American former county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, who gained international attention in August 2015 when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Timothy Neil Philpot is an American lawyer, author and judge. He was elected to serve as a family court circuit judge in Fayette County, Kentucky in 2004, and again in 2006 and 2014, in the latter case with a term expiring in January 2023. He previously served as a Republican member of the Kentucky Senate from 1993 to 1998 and as the president of Christian Business Men's Connection from 1996 to 2003. As a judge, Philpot has been criticized for making controversial statements about LGBT people but also has been defended as not allowing his social views to influence his judicial decisions. Philpot is an author of a semi-autobiographical novel drawing on cases he has heard and his experiences as a judge, explored from his socially conservative Methodist perspective.
Claria Denise Horn Boom is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. She is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
