Roy Moore, Alabama Chief Justice, Suspended Over Gay Marriage Order
The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy S. Moore, was suspended on Friday for the remainder of his term in office for ordering the state’s probate judges to defy federal court orders on same-sex marriage, reports The New York Times.
The Alabama Court of the Judiciary did not remove Moore from the bench entirely, as it did in 2003 after he defied orders to remove a giant monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, but the order effectively ends his career as a Supreme Court justice. His term ends in 2019, and Chief Justice Moore, 69, will be barred by law from running again at that time because of his age, reports The Times‘ Campbell Robertson.
The unanimous nine-member court cited Moore’s “disregard for binding federal law,” exhibited in a January order to the state’s 68 probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and “his history with this court.”