Gov. Robert Bentley on Monday announced the seven members of the Special Supreme Court that will be empaneled to hear Chief Justice Roy Moore’s ethics appeal.
The Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore in September without pay for the remainder of his term, which ends in 2019.
Bentley announced the following judges will sit on the panel: H. Edward McFerrin, Robert G. Cahill, William R. Kind, James H Reid Jr., Lynn Clardy Bright, Ralph A. Ferguson Jr. and John D. Coggin.
McFerrin is a retired circuit judge from Lowdnes, Butler and Crenshaw counties. Cahill and Ferguson are retired Jefferson County district and circuit judges, respectively. King, Bright and Coggin are retired district judges from Crenshaw, Montgomery and Cherokee counties, respectively. Reid is a retired circuit judge from Baldwin County.
The Alabama Supreme Court drew 50 names from a pool of retired appellate, circuit and district court judges Oct. 27. The names were placed on a list in the order they were drawn. The first seven judges who were willing and able to serve were those selected.
Moore and his attorney said after the lottery that they would review the names of the seven judges selected and make a decision about “whether there are names that raise conflict of interest concerns.”
“Chief Justice Moore is merely asking for the same thing any citizen is entitled to receive: equal justice under the law,” said Moore’s lead attorney Mat Staver. “He is not wanting judges that have a bias for or against him. He wants judges who will follow the rule of law. Politics and ideology have no place in the final outcome of this case.”
With his suspension, Moore has kept his title, but he lost his authority, his office and his employees.
The Court of the Judiciary, which heard the case, said in its ruling that Moore violated the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics by disregarding federal law in a January 2016 administrative order to the state’s 67 probate judges.
Moore became famous first in 2003 for refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a 2-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building. He was removed completely from his post by a unanimous verdict.
In his Jan. 6 order, Moore said the state’s probate judges had a “ministerial duty” to follow the state’s same-sex marriage ban, not the federal judiciary’s order in Obergefell v. Hodges that effectively legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
Moore’s attorneys said the Jan. 6 administrative order was simply a “status update” on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell, an Alabama Supreme Court order in 2014 concerning same-sex marriage and U.S. District Judge Callie Granade’s order that ruled the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
It was meant to clarify the conflicting orders, Moore’s attorneys said.
Moore and his attorneys at the Liberty Counsel filed an appeal with the Alabama Supreme Court in early October.
At the time, Moore said the court’s judges would have to recuse themselves and a new court would need to be empaneled to hear the case.
The eight remaining associate justices of the Alabama Supreme Court recused themselves on Oct. 24 in an opinion. They also decided the method that was used to pick the new judges.
Three associate justices dissented from the opinion and said they felt the pool should have been gathered from active elected judges in the state instead of retired judges. They believed active judges could be held accountable to the people.
“The people of Alabama have increasingly called upon their judges to be accountable,” Staver, who is also the founder of the Liberty Counsel, said. “At every turn, this case presents new twists and turns that have never occurred in the history of Alabama.”
If Moore’s suspension is upheld by the Special Supreme Court, his judicial career will be effectively over.
He will not be allowed to run again for a Supreme Court seat because state statute prohibits anyone over 70 years old from running for election for a judicial position.
Moore and his attorneys have contended that the chief justice did nothing wrong and did not violate judicial ethics. They believe his suspension was politically motiviated.
“Chief Justice Moore’s legal order was in no way illegal, immoral or unethical and his prosecution was political, not legal, in nature,” said Kayla Moore, the chief justice’s wife who also runs the Foundation for Moral Law.
The foundation provides legal counsel to individuals in religous liberty cases.
Kayla and her husband have lost more than 75 percent of their income because of Moore’s suspension without pay, she said.
“They are trying to bankrupt us,” she said. “We also lost our insurance. They would like nothing more than to ruin him and our family.
The chief justice is appealing his suspension because he “owes it to the people,” Kayla said.
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