Alabama Chief Justice fights back against campaign to oust him for upholding marriage
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is fighting back as leftist
activists campaign to remove him from office over his stand for natural
marriage.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Human Rights
Campaign (HRC), and numerous atheists and LGBT activists have filed complaints
with the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission against Moore, alleging ethical
misconduct for urging state probate judges to uphold Alabama’s marriage laws
and not a federal court ruling striking them down.
But on Wednesday, Justice Moore asked the commission to dismiss
the complaints, saying at a press conference that they are groundless and
“politically motivated.”
“This is not about a wrongdoing I’ve done. This is not
about ethics. This is about marriage,” said Moore, according to Alabama News.
“There’s nothing in writing that you will find that I told anybody to disobey a
federal court order.”
Moore has ordered probate judges in Alabama to uphold the
state’s laws defining marriage as the union of a man and woman despite a
federal court ruling striking down those laws and despite the Supreme Court’s
redefining of marriage in its landmark decision Obergefell
v. Hodges. Moore has instructed the judges not to act
contrary to Alabama law—which issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses would
contradict—until the Supreme Court rules on which law should be applied in the
state.
Most probate judges in Alabama have ignored Moore and issued
same-sex “marriage” licenses.
Moore insists that he’s not encouraging probate judges to defy a
federal court order, as leftist activists claim, but is instructing them to
continue following the state laws protecting marriage. Moore says that
the judges are obligated to follow state law until the United States Supreme
Court rules on the Alabama Supreme Court decision upholding the state’s
marriage laws despite federal demands.
The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission, the group with whom the
SPLC and other LGBT activists have filed their complaint, has not yet
responded. The Commission has the authority to recommend Moore face
ethics charges in the Alabama Court of the Judiciary, which could then remove
Moore from the Court if they find he’s violated the Alabama Judicial Canons of
Ethics or engaged in misconduct. The vast
majority of judges
brought before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary face some sort of
disciplinary action, which can range from being removed from the bench to
suspension.
In 2003, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary removed Moore as
Chief Justice over his refusal to follow a federal court’s orders that he
remove a statue of the 10 Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building.
Moore was re-elected as Chief Justice in 2012.
The opinion that removed Moore as Chief Justice in 2003 said
that the oath he took commands him “to support both the United States and
Alabama Constitutions” and if there is a conflict between the documents, “the
Constitution of the United States must prevail.”
“Nothing in the United States Constitution grants the federal
government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage,” Moore
wrote to Alabama
Governor Robert Bentley on January 27, 2015. “The people of this state
have specifically recognized in our Constitution that marriage is ‘[a] sacred
covenant, solemnized between a man and a woman’; that ‘[a] marriage contracted
between individuals of the same sex is invalid in this state’; and that ‘[a]
union replicating marriage of or between persons of the same sex…shall be
considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in
this state.’”
The “destruction” of marriage is “upon us by federal courts
using specious pretexts based on the Equal Protection, Due Process, and Full
Faith and Credit Clauses of the United States Constitution,” Moore wrote.
“If we are to preserve that ‘reverent morality which is our source of all
beneficent progress in social and political improvement,’ then we must act to
oppose such tyranny!”
The federal court decision was not binding for Alabama probate
judges, Moore argued, and probate judges should continue to follow Alabama law
defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
On January 6, 2016, despite the June 2015 Supreme Court ruling Obergefell
v. Hodges, which redefined marriage across the United States, Moore
issued anadministrative
order to the state’s
probate judges “not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama
Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act.”
Moore said that judges should not act contrary to state laws until the Supreme
Court rules on the effects of Obergefell on the Alabama Supreme Court’s
existing orders, which uphold the state’s marriage laws.
“Whether or not the Alabama Supreme Court will apply the
reasoning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the
United States District Court for the District of Kansas, or some other legal
analysis is yet to be determined. Yet the fact remains that the administration
of justice in the State of Alabama has been adversely affected by the apparent
conflict between the decision of the Alabama Supreme Court in API [which upheld natural marriage] and
the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell,” Moore wrote.
At a rally on the plaza of the Alabama Judicial Building on
January 12, an activist who appeared to be a man dressed as a woman encouraged
the LGBT activists and supporters present to fill out form complaints against
Moore, even providing “suggested text” that the activists could use. A
free notary was present to formalize the complaints, which joined the SPLC’s
ongoing ethics complaint against Moore and the HRC’s 28,000-signature petition
to the Judicial Inquiry Commission demanding Moore’s removal.
The rally finished with a same-sex wedding ceremony in spite of
the Alabama Supreme Court’s existing orders protecting marriage, which remain
under review, Liberty Counsel reported.
“The complaints against Chief
Justice Roy Moore are about marriage, as indicated by the rally held on the
steps of the Supreme Court. He did nothing wrong,” said Mat Staver, Founder and
Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The politically motivated complaints filed
with the JIC have no basis in the Canons of Judicial Ethics. The Alabama
Supreme Court is the only body that has statutory authority to overrule
administrative orders of the Chief Justice…The complaints filed against the
Chief Justice ask the JIC to usurp the legal authority of the Justices of the
Alabama Supreme Court to review the administrative orders of the Chief Justice.
Those complaints also pose a threat to the doctrine of judicial independence.
Judges must be free to exercise their considered judgment without the threat of
being attacked by organizations and individuals who wish to misuse the ethical
process to further a radical political agenda.”
