Alabama Chief Justice Suspended For Denying Gay Marriage Decision

Judge Roy Moore, the defiant chief justice of Alabama's supreme court, was suspended Thursday for the rest of his term after he told the state's probate judges to defy a U.S. Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage the law of the land.

It is the second time that the recalcitrant Moore has been removed from the state's judicial bench by an ethics court, and further throws into turmoil a state that is facing the possibility of its top three elected officials being removed from office in the same year.

Alabama's house speaker was sentenced to prison this summer and its governor, Robert Bentley, is facing impeachment.

In January, Moore issued an administrative order to probate judges in Alabama, telling them that the Supreme Court's landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision did not apply to the state of Alabama, since Alabama was not part of the lawsuit.

Moore told probate judges to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Many of the state's judges defied Moore's order and issued them anyway.

On Thursday, an Alabama judicial court ruled that Moore had violated standards of judicial ethics and suspended him from the bench for the remainder of his term. Moore was found guilty of six ethics charges of violation of canon of judicial ethics.

Its decision does not officially oust Moore from office but ensures he will not have a hand in the state's judicial system anymore.

His term is set to end in 2019. Bentley, the governor, will name his replacement in the mean time.

Thursday's decision, though, was only the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Moore's career in the state, which has been characterized by his defiant and deeply conservative attitude, especially on social issues.

Moore first made national news in 2003, when he refused a federal judge's order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state's judicial building. He was suspended later that year by the same judicial court.

He ran for chief justice again in 2012 and was elected again.

Moore's removal from the bench continued Alabama's year of political turmoil and turnover. House Speaker Mike Hubbard was sentenced this summer to four years in prison after he was found to have used his political position to strengthen his personal investments and income.

The impeachment process is already underway for Bentley, the governor, who allegedly used state funds to carry on an affair with a staffer in his office.

Image via state of Alabama