Judge Roy Moore Takes Another High Court Shot at Reclaiming Bench Seat

by Allie Martin
May 27, 2004

(AgapePress) - The former chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court is appealing his removal from office to the nation's highest court.

Roy Moore was removed from his position as the Alabama court's chief justice last year after he refused to obey a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Rotunda of the judicial building in Montgomery. Now the ousted judge is appealing that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Roy Moore

The former state court justice says this request is different from the appeal that the Supreme Court refused to consider last year. According to Associated Press, this time Moore and his counsel are seeking a high court review of his ouster on the basis that his constitutional rights were violated. "We are planning to petition the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari in this case, regarding the removal of a person from office because of what he believes," Moore says.

Moore feels his case exposes hypocrisy in the judicial system. "The federal courts all open with 'God save the United States and this honorable court,' as does the United States Supreme Court. To deny the sovereignty of God is to deny their very opening of court and the basis of their oath, [which concludes with] 'So help me God," he says.

The problem in America for the last 40 or 50 years, Moore asserts, is that its citizens have accepted this hypocrisy without question. But now, he contends, "people are starting to question why the courts can say one thing and do another."

And the Alabama judge notes that there is legal precedent for the courts' acknowledgment of God. For instance, he says, "In 1961, the case of Torcaso v. Watkins stands for the proposition that a Maryland notary public didn't have to take an oath to believe in God. The U.S. Supreme Court said it was a religious test."

"In my case, I was excluded for acknowledging the sovereignty of God," Moore explains, "which is -- according to their definition -- a religious test. If it was a religious test then, it should be a religious test now, and I shouldn't be excluded from office."

The judge's appeal claims that the Alabama Supreme Court did not give him due process of law when the justices refused to examine the federal court order, which he has called both unethical and unlawful. He feels there is a good chance the high court will hear his case, since the main issues in the appeal have to do with his basic rights under the First Amendment.

Moore finds it noteworthy that his ousting and the removal of his Ten Commandments monument from public display last year were followed by the legalization of homosexual marriage in some parts of the U.S. this year. Both in public commentary and in his testimony before federal judges, the former Alabama chief justice has contended that America's moral decline is directly linked to its failure to acknowledge the God of the Bible as sovereign over the nation and its laws.