BREAKING: Alabama Commission Files Ethics Charges Against State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore

UPDATE BELOW: Moore Has been suspended. 

Earlier….. Just in from the SPLC:

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore could once again be removed from the bench as the result of judicial ethics complaints filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) after he instructed state court judges to defy a federal court order and enforce the state’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Ruling on the SPLC complaints, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) announced today that it has filed ethics charges against Moore, setting up a trial in the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.

“Moore has disgraced his office for far too long,” said SPLC President Richard Cohen. “He’s such a religious zealot, such an egomaniac that he thinks he doesn’t have to follow federal court rulings he disagrees with. For the good of the state, he should be kicked out of office.”

Moore may be suspended pending the ruling by the Court of the Judiciary. If the court finds him guilty, he could be permanently removed from office, though the court could levy lesser sanctions.

The court removed Moore from the bench once before, in 2003, in response to an SPLC ethics complaint after he refused to comply with a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he installed in the state judicial building. He was re-elected to the post in 2012.

Ten days ago Moore held a press conference to denounce the mentally ill “atheists, homosexuals, and transgenders” who had conspired with the SPLC to file the complaint. He is being represented by the Liberty Counsel. Some locals say that Moore actually wants to be booted from the bench as that would set up his run for governor of Alabama.

UPDATE: From the New York Times.



Moore, 69, has been immediately suspended from the bench and is facing a potential hearing before the state’s Court of the Judiciary, a panel of judges, lawyers and other appointees. Among possible outcomes at such a hearing would be his removal from office.

“We intend to fight this agenda vigorously and expect to prevail,” Chief Justice Moore said in a statement, saying that the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which filed the complaint, had no authority over the charges at issue.

Referring to a transgender activist in Alabama, Chief Justice Moore said the commission had “chosen to listen to people like Ambrosia Starling, a professed transvestite, and other gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, as well as organizations which support their agenda.”