Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore does it again

Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roy Moore, already had a dubious claim to fame.  In 2003, when he previously served as Chief Justice, he commissioned and installed in the Alabama Judiciary Building a two and one-half ton granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.    A legal battle ensued, a federal judge ordered him to remove the monument.  Moore refused, and then the Alabama Court of the Judiciary stepped in and removed Moore from office.

Moore then twice ran for governor and lost.   In 2011 he ran again for Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice -- and won.   So, not to be outdone by his previous defiance as the state's chief judge, he has come up with another act of defiance.

It began following the U. S. Supreme Court decision last June to overturn bans on same-sex marriage in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.   SCOTUS chose to hear those four appeals, because they were all from the 8th Circuit and represented the only controversy on the issue at the appeals court level.    All the other circuit appeals have resulted in bans being overturned.   And it is widely accepted that SCOTUS' ruling applies to all 50 states, not just the four states whose cases were heard.

Widely accepted, that is, except in Justice Roy Moore's narrow world inhabited by the likes of Kim Davis and her supporters.   Soon after the SCOTUS decision last June, Moore refused to order county clerks in Alabama to issue same-sex licenses to gay couples, although most did.

Now Moore has issued an administrative order barring state judges from issuing the licenses, claiming that SCOTUS' decision struck down marriage bans only in the four states named in the suits.    His order referred to the "confusion and uncertainty" about the ruling and referenced the jailing of Kim Davis as an example.

Like his soul-mates Kim Davis, who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses in a Kentucky county, and the Bundy crowd occupying a federal building in Oregon to demand that national park land be returned to local control, Moore seems not to accept federal courts and federal laws as superceding state courts and laws.  Moore claims, somewhat blithely, that the Alabama Supreme Court's interpretation of the SCOTUS decision on marriage equality is "yet to be determined."

Is that absurd claim clear?   He wants Alabama's court to "interpret" a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court?  It's questionable whether Moore really thinks he has a case;  perhaps he's just grandstanding again.  What he thinks he can wring out of this is very murky indeed.

We shall see.   Once upon a time, federal marshals were sent to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the integration of pubic schools.   Will we see the same thing happening on gay marriage?    Would this be the 2016 latest version of a "shotgun wedding?" 

Ralph