Just hours after the House Judiciary Committee approved the hiring of Jackson Sharman to provide special counsel for Gov. Robert Bentley's impeachment, the Judicial Inquiry Committee submitted a response asking for the Court of Judiciary to immediately remove Chief Justice Roy Moore from the bench.
Last month, Moore and his legal team filed a motion requesting the dismissal of all charges against him. In their response to Moore's motion, the Judicial Inquiry Commission asked for their own prompt summary judgment.
Instead of a summary judgment for dismissal, the commission wants a summary judgment removing Moore.
"Moreover, because he has proven — and promised — that given the opportunity he would ignore our nation's founding principals and flout the rule of law again, the only sanction that will adequately protect the Alabama judicial system, and the citizens who depend on it for justice, is an order from [the Court of the Judiciary] removing Roy S. Moore from the office of Chief Justice of Alabama," the JIC said in their response this afternoon.
The JIC once again said today that Moore violated the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics — the ethics rules which govern Alabama's judges — when he ordered the state's probate judges in January of this year to defy the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Obergefell decision effectively legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States. In doing so, it solidified the unconstitutionality of Alabama's same-sex marriage ban.
"Reduced to its essentials, the Complaint contains six charges alleging that the Chief Justice's January 6th Order not only constituted flagrant disregard of federal law by directing every subordinate probate judge in Alabama to ignore a federal injunction and clear federal law," the JIC said. "But also represented an abuse of his administrative authority, and placed his impartiality into question on a matter pending before the Alabama Supreme Court — all of which violate the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics."
The Judicial Inquiry Commission's response also argued that Moore's actions bring "disrepute" to the state's judicial system.
If he is removed from the bench permanently by the Court of the Judiciary, it wouldn't be the first time. In 2003, Moore was removed from the state Supreme Court by the Court of the Judiciary for defying a federal court injunction demanding the removal of a two-ton, granite Ten Commandments monument.
"No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity," the commission wrote, quoting the Court's decision in 2003. "All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it."
Later last month, the Court agreed to hear oral arguments from Moore related to his motion for dismissal. Chief Judge Mike Joiner set the date for that hearing at Aug. 8.
Moore has maintained he did nothing wrong in submitting the administrative order. In addition to the motion for dismissal, Moore's legal counsel also filed a federal lawsuit against the Judicial Inquiry Commission.
When the initial complaint by the commission was filed in early May, Moore was immediately removed from the bench temporarily pending the judgment of the Court of the Judiciary.
Moore's legal team argued that the automatic removal is unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge W. Harold Albritton set the date for oral arguments in that case for Aug. 4.
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