An Auburn alumna is now the official head of the state's judicial system, and for the first time in Alabama’s history, Auburn alumnae are at the helm of two of the state’s branches of government.
Gov. Kay Ivey, a 1967 graduate, appointed Associate Justice Lyn Stuart, a 1977 graduate, to lead Alabama’s judicial system as the chief justice of the state's Supreme Court. Stuart, only the second woman in Alabama to hold the post, had been serving as acting chief justice since Chief Justice Roy Moore’s suspension in May 2016 following ethics violation charges.
“To ensure a continuity of leadership and a smooth transition that keeps the ship of state steady, I have appointed Justice Lyn Stuart as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court,” Ivey said. “Chief Justice Stuart has served with honor and integrity on the high court for more than 16 years. I look forward to working with her as she now leads the judicial branch of state government.”
Moore resigned his position Wednesday afternoon and Ivey quickly moved to formally make Stuart the chief justice. Moore, who was found guilty in September of violating Alabama's judicial ethics rules, plans to run in a special election later this year for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats.
Stuart, the first female Republican chief justice, will serve out the rest of Moore’s term, which is set to expire in January 2019. She has said she will seek re-election to the post in the 2018 statewide general election, but she already has some competition.
Association Justice Tom Parker, a longtime Moore ally who called the chief justice's suspension "unlawful," announced Wednesday that he will seek the Republican Party’s nomination for chief justice as well.
“Alabama is a conservative state,” Parker said. “We revere the Constitution and the rule of law. And I believe our courts are the battleground for our God-given rights as free people.”
Ivey has yet to announce who she will appoint as an associate justice to fill the empty seat on the nine-member court.
After graduating from Auburn, Stuart received her law degree from the University of Alabama Law School in 1980. She began her judicial career in 1988 when she was elected as a district judge and was first elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000. She has been re-elected three times since.
Last week a special supreme court empaneled to hear Moore’s appeal of the 2016 ethics ruling upheld his permanent suspension, which was set to last until his term expired in 2019.
The suspension effectively ended his judicial career, leaving him as chief justice in title only. He was removed from the court, lost his office, his employees and his power. Alabama law prohibited him from running for re-election to the court because of his age.
The Court of the Judiciary — a nine-member panel that reviews ethics complaints against the state’s judges — suspended Moore on Sept. 30, 2016, for issuing an administrative order that they said defied the federal judiciary.
The court said Moore’s administrative order, issued on Jan. 6, 2016, directed the state's 67 probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
At the time, he said probate judges had a “ministerial duty” not to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of previous Alabama Supreme Court rulings and Alabama’s traditional marriage amendments, which federal courts declared unconstitutional in 2015.
Moore, who has been an avid opponent of same-sex marriage throughout his judicial career, now plans to run against U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, whom former Gov. Robert Bentley appointed to Jeff Sessions’ seat in February.
In his campaign announcement Wednesday, Moore said the federal government needs to get back to a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
“You know before we can make America great again, we have got to make America good again,” Moore said. “The foundations of the fabric of our country are being shaken tremendously. Our families are being crippled by divorce and abortion. Our sacred institution of marriage has being destroyed by the Supreme Court.”
This isn’t the first time Moore lost his job on the Alabama Supreme Court. The same judicial panel removed him from his post in 2003 after he refused to comply with a federal court order directing him to remove a 2-ton Ten Commandments monument from the state’s judicial building.
Moore, whom voters sent back to the court in 2012, never finished either of his terms of chief justice.
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