Faces Removal Once Again as Supreme Court Chief Justice
A state disciplinary court Wednesday afternoon concluded its hearing on Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who is charged misusing his authority by instructing all probate judges to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Moore’s attorney Mat Staver, who also represented Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, argued a direction the Chief Justice gave judges statewide was merely a “status report” that “did not order them to disobey anything,” the AP reports.
“I don’t encourage anyone to defy a federal court or state court order,” Moore, under oath, told the Court of the Judiciary. “I gave them a status in the case, a status of the facts that these orders exist. That is all I did.”
Moore has railed against same-sex marriage for years and even claimed that despite a federal judge’s ruling and later the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell, same-sex marriage was not legal in Alabama.
Chief Judge Michael Joiner, who heads the nine-member Court of the Judiciary that heard the case today is not expected to deliver a decision immediately. The Court has ten days.
‘We Are Here 13 Years Later Because the Chief Justice Learned Nothing From That First Removal’
In 2003 Moore was removed from his role as Supreme Court Chief Justice after refusing a federal order to remove a stone monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, which he had installed. Despite the removal, Moore ran and was again elected as Chief Justice.
“We are here 13 years later because the Chief Justice learned nothing from that first removal,” Attorney John Carroll, who represents the Judicial Inquiry Commission, told the Court of the Judiciary. “He continues to defy law.” The JIC has recommended Moore once again be removed from office.
R. Ashby Pate, another attorney representing the JIC, told the court Moore’s order “sowed confusion. It did not clear it up. He urged defiance, not compliance.”
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