Lawyers for Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore on Wednesday asked the state Judicial Inquiry Commission to dismiss complaints against him, contending they are a politically motivated response to his support for traditional marriage and have nothing to do with the ethics of the office.
Lawyers with the non-profit Liberty Counsel appeared at a news conference to seek the dismissal of complaints filed against Moore by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which previously has been linked to domestic terrorism in the United States, the far-left People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign and other groups.
The complaints followed a rally held by Ambrosia Starling, a transvestite, on the plaza of the Alabama Judicial Building.
“Starling provided a ‘suggested text’ to be ‘hand-transcribed’ into the complaint form,” Liberty Counsel said Wednesday.
Starling then “called for 50 people to ‘participate in the movement together as a group’ by copying the provided text into the official complaint form.”
Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, said the “complaints against Chief Justice Roy Moore are about marriage, as indicated by the rally held on the steps of the Supreme Court.”
“He did nothing wrong,” Staver said.
“The politically motivated complaints filed with the JIC have no basis in the Canons of Judicial Ethics. The Alabama Supreme Court is the only body that has statutory authority to overrule administrative orders of the chief justice. See § 12-5-20, Ala. Code 1975. The complaints filed against the chief justice ask the JIC to usurp the legal authority of the justices of the Alabama Supreme Court to review the administrative orders of the chief justice.,” said Staver.
“Those complaints also pose a threat to the doctrine of judicial independence. Judges must be free to exercise their considered judgment without the threat of being attacked by organizations and individuals who wish to misuse the ethical process to further a radical political agenda,” he said.
Moore is represented by Staver as well as Philip Jauregui, founder of Judicial Action Group. The attorneys for the chief justice explained that the complaints against him are not about ethical misconduct but instead are an attack on his statements and administrative orders about the legal status of Alabama’s Sanctity of Marriage laws.
Under the Alabama Constitution, the chief justice has administrative authority over Alabama probate judges, Liberty Counsel explained.
“When a federal district court ruled against the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage laws, the probate judges were confused about whether they should issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In February 2015, Chief Justice Moore issued an administrative order stating that the opinion from the federal court applied only to the parties in that case and that the probate judges as non-parties to that case were bound to follow Alabama law. In March 2015, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered the probate judges to cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. …In a separate ruling, the federal district court also acknowledged that its opinion was limited to the parties only,” Liberty Counsel said.
Moore later followed with another order reminding the judges of their obligation to follow existing orders. In March, the court itself issued a certificate of judgment in the case that did not vacate or change the original orders.
The fight is over the state court’s handling of its cases before and after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its marriage ruling. Dissenting justices called the decision unconnected to the U.S. Constitution, and there has been widespread opposition since then.
A federal judge had ordered Alabama to create same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court decision. But the ruling applied to the parties only. Then came the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, and the state court asked for comments on how it should handle its existing order affirming the validity of the state’s definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Eventually, all of the petitions and comments were thrown out, leaving the orders affirming state law standing.
WND reported that when the Alabama ruling was released, misleading headlines across the country trumpeted a victory for the homosexual community.
Among them was an ABC headline, “Alabama Supreme Court refuses to defy SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage.” It discussed the court’s dismissal of a number of petitions in the case.
But in reality, Alabama’s judges did defy the U.S. Supreme Court. The state court rejected a “right” to same-sex marriage and refused to consider a challenge to its ruling upholding traditional marriage.
WND reported the Alabama high court’s decision criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s creation of same-sex marriage as “lawless” and left undisturbed its determination dating back to 2015 that the state’s Sanctity of Marriage Amendment and Marriage Protection Act, limiting marriage to one man and one woman, are constitutional and binding.
Liberty Counsel explained that on March 3, 2015, months before the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly established same-sex marriage, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a 135-page order upholding the state’s marriage laws and ordering certain named probate judges to stop issuing licenses to same-sex couples.
Then, Probate Judge Don Davis asked to be relieved of the order because it contradicted a federal court order that demanded the state establish same-sex marriage. On March 10, 2015, the state Supreme Court rejected the petition.
On March 12, the state court issued yet another order that “all probate judges” were included in the March 3 order.
Then, other petitions related to the case were dismissed, but the underlying orders were affirmed in a certificate of judgment that got far less publicity than the order for dismissals.
In fact, Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote at the time: “Today this court by order dismisses all pending motions and petitions and issues the certificate of judgment in this case. That action does not disturb the existing March orders in this case or the court’s holding therein that the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, art. I, § 36.03, Ala. Const. 1901, and the Alabama Marriage Protection Act, § 30-1-9, Ala. Code 1975, are constitutional. Therefore, and for the reasons stated below, I concur with the order.”
WND has reported on SPLC’s history, which, its critics contend, has cost it all credibility.
Liberty Counsel pointed out that under the standard SPLC uses to call group’s “hate” organizations, the Catholic church would qualify, as well as virtually every major Christian group in the world.
‘Hate’ label would apply to Obama
The SPLC’s “hate” label also would have applied to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, before they “evolved” to become ardent supporters of “same-sex marriage,” noted Staver.
An anonymously written AP article attacked Liberty Counsel and included interviews with several ardent critics of Liberty Counsel’s Christian agenda, including SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok. SPLC, AP said, “lists the Liberty Counsel as an anti-gay hate groups (sic) for spreading false information.”
But Staver told WND that while Liberty Counsel’s position on gay rights is based on age-old Christian beliefs, not hatred, SPLC routinely affixes the “hate” label on groups or individuals who disagree with its pro-homosexual agenda.
Liberty Counsel points out AP is relying on an organization that has been linked to terrorism in the United States.
“By falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as ‘hate groups,’ the SPLC is directly responsible for the first conviction of a man who intended to commit mass murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.,” Liberty Counsel’s report said.
“On August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr. Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLC’s hate map.”
WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson.
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Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers when Corkins named the Southern Poverty Law Center as his inspiration.
Central to the case, according to the government’s document, was that Corkins “had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.”
FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are not “anti-gay.”
“Consistent with his statement to the FBI, a … search of Corkins’s family computer revealed that on the afternoon of Sunday, August 12, Corkins used the computer to visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, as well as the websites for the FRC and the second organization on his handwritten list. The FBI later recovered from Corkins’s home several printed Mapquest and Google maps, dated August 12, 2012, for directions to the FRC and the second organization, as well as the pad of stationary paper used by Corkins to create his handwritten list of targets,” the government explained in its court case against Corkins.
The SPLC attacked then-GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson with a “hate” label.
“Blatantly affronts Constitution’
Same-sex marriage was mandated in 2015 by the bare 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court majority of Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia opposed it.
Moore noted: “Does an opinion of the United States Supreme Court, like Obergefell, which blatantly affronts the Constitution, automatically become the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘law of the land?’ Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England became the ‘manual of almost every student of law in the United States’ during this nation’s formative years. Blackstone stated that ‘the law, and the opinion of the judge are not always convertible terms, or one and the same thing; since it sometimes may happen that the judge may mistake the law.’”
The underlying case in Alabama was brought on behalf of the Alabama Policy Institute and others. It came after U.S. District Judge Callie Granada, prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, ordered the establishment of same-sex marriage in the state.
Then Moore ordered probate judges to follow the state constitution, which recognizes marriages only between a man and a woman. The state court’s order eventually replaced Moore’s order.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, the state court “invited the parties … to address the ‘effect of the Supreme Court’s decision on this court’s existing orders in this case.’” It eventually dismissed all of the petitions.
Moore was not the only justice unhappy with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Alabama Associate Justice Michael Bolin wrote that the opinion was “without any constitutional basis” but said the “Supremacy Clause forbids state courts to dissociate themselves from federal law because of disagreement with its content or a refusal to recognize the superior authority of its source.”
Bolin said it is “without dispute that the concept of same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in either this nation’s or this state’s history and tradition – or frankly anywhere.”
“To the contrary, from its earliest days, circa 1800s, Alabama has, with little modification, provided a statutory scheme for the formal licensing and recognition of marriages as being between a man and a woman.”
He said in 1998 and 2006, the legislature and the people “recommitted expressly to the vital nature of the meaning of marriage in our present statutory scheme.”
Not only did the state exercise its sovereign authority to define marriage, as permitted under the Ninth and 10th Amendments, the U.S. Supreme Court majority, just a few years earlier, even acknowledged that authority, in the Windsor case.
Then, abruptly, “without comment concerning, or apology regarding, those words, only two years later the same Justice Kennedy … reversed course and decreed that all states are now required by the Constitution to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples,” he wrote.
The reversal, he noted, was not based on any fundamental right, but “rather on … self-declared beliefs that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.”
Rule of law is dead
And Alabama Justice Tom Parker said the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage decision “conclusively demonstrates that the rule of law is dead.”
Further, the U.S. Supreme Court is damaging itself, he said.
“In marching this country ‘forward’ to their moral ideal, the ‘five lawyers’ comprising the majority in Obergefell have trampled into the dust the last vestiges of the legitimacy of the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote. “There appears to be no restraint on the judiciary, because ‘five lawyers’ believe that they may simply decide, with no legal support whatsoever, that a particular fundamental right be created because they think it fair.
“This is not the rule of law, this is despotism and tyranny.”
Critics also have raised a number of other concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court opinion.
For one, two of the justices in the majority, Kagan and Ginsburg, were asked to recuse themselves from the case because they had openly advocated for same-sex marriage, apparently violating standards to preserve judicial impartiality. Without their votes, the case would have gone the other way.
Then there was the U.S. Supreme Court’s own opinion just two years earlier, in the Defense of Marriage Act case, in which the court said states have exclusive power over marriage.
And there also are those who point out that the Constitution doesn’t mention marriage but does dictate that everything not mentioned in the document is left to the states and the people.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling “same-sex marriage” an “intrinsic evil.”
And officials from several counties in Tennessee have adopted statements opposing the Supreme Court.
WND also reported when dozens of top legal scholars from the likes of Washington & Lee, Boston College, Kansas State, Notre Dame, University of Texas, Villanova, Vanderbilt, Hillsdale, University of Nebraska, Catholic University and Regent University issued a statement encouraging all state and federal officials to treat the Supreme Court’s recent creation of “same-sex marriage” as “anti-constitutional and illegitimate.”
“It cannot … be taken to have settled the law of the United States,” said the statement from the American Principles Project.
“We call on all federal and state officeholders: To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case. To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions. To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons. To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evidence in Obergefell.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/state-chief-justices-lawyers-charge-splc-with-political-attack/
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