Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme court has had what can charitably be called a checkered career—all based on his right-wing and hyper-religious views that repeatedly tainted his rulings. In 2003, he was removed as Chief Justice for disobeying a federal court order that he remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the courthouse grounds. He regained this Chief Justice-ship in 2012 by election, which shows you something about the political climate of Alabama. (The state elects its Chief Justices.)

He hadn’t learned his lesson, though, and didn’t keep his big yap shut. A year later, at a Pro-Life luncheon, he proclaimed that the First Amendment applied only to Christians (see my post here), for, after all, it was God and not Buddha or Mohamed who created us.

And then big trouble: in February of last year, Moore ordered that state employees ignore a federal court ruling that Alabama must issue licenses for gay marriage (see post here). Most employees, however, ignored Moore and issued the licenses anyway.

Now, according to the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser (see also yesterday’s article in the New York Times), an inquiry by the state Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) has led to Moore’s suspension from the bench, and possibly to his permanent removal as Chief Justice—again! (I don’t know if he faces permanent removal from the court.) He faces charges of not only violating ethical rules, but abrogating other duties:

The Judicial Inquiry Commission accuses Moore of failing to act with impartiality and refusing to follow “clear law” in issuing his Jan. 6 order, which came six months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Moore is also charged with acting while a lawsuit over the constitutionality of same-sex marriage was pending before the court.

. . . The charges state that Moore “knowingly ordered” the state’s probate judges “to commit violations of the Canons of Judicial Ethics and “abandoned his role as a neutral and detached chief administrator of the judicial system.”

Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed the complaint, said the Court of the Judiciary should remove Moore “for the good of the state.”

“Moore has disgraced his office for far too long,” the statement said. “He’s such a religious zealot, such an egomaniac that he thinks he doesn’t have to follow federal court rulings he disagrees with.”

Indeed. The man just can’t stop proselytizing, or tainting his decisions with his faith, completely ignoring what the higher federal courts say. Here’s one example of his inability to control himself and follow the law:

The chief justice, an outspoken social conservative, has made no secret of his feelings on same-sex marriage. In March, Moore said proposed American Bar Association rule change intended to expand protections for LGBT individuals was “subordinating an attorney’s ethical duties to the sexual orthodoxy du jour.”

And from Wikipedia, on the fight over the Ten Commandments monument:

Additionally, Moore acknowledged an explicit religious intent in placing the monument, agreeing that the monument “reflects the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men” and “acknowledge[s] God’s overruling power over the affairs of men.” However, in Moore’s view this did not violate the doctrine of separation of church and state; as the presiding judge later summarized it, Moore argued that “the Judeo-Christian God reigned over both the church and the state in this country, and that both owed allegiance to that God”, although they must keep their affairs separate.

This man, though he may be the Pride of Alabama, is a Disgrace to America. He should not be serving as a justice at all, much less chief justice. His continuing popularity in the state is a source of shame to those Alabamans who maintain any adherence to Enlightenment values.

I hope they dump his sorry tuchus.