A second justice on the Alabama Supreme Court is fighting off an attack from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization that famously put retired brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson on its “thoroughly disgusting list of ‘haters.’”
The SPLC earlier filed a complaint against Chief Justice Roy Moore, prompting him to respond with a lawsuit over the violations of his constitutional rights embedded in the procedures the SPLC used.
Now, officials with Liberty Counsel have sued on behalf of Justice Tom Parker over the speech restrictions included in the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics, as well as a procedure that automatically suspends a judge if there has been an accusation against him.
“These provisions are being used by the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies on the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission in an attempt to intimidate, silence, and punish Justice Parker for his originalist judicial philosophy and protected speech,” the legal organization explained.
“The judicial canon which prohibits any judges from speaking on any case pending anywhere in the country is a clear violation of the First Amendment. This canon is so broad it would prohibit a judge who teaches in a law school from commenting on any case pending in any court in America. That such a broad prohibition on speech is unconstitutional is an understatement. Combining this unconstitutional provision with Alabama’s automatic removal provision of judges charged by the JIC compound the constitutional violation,” said Mat Staver, chief of Liberty Counsel, which is representing Parker.
“Justice Parker has a constitutional right to speak out on the case so long as he is not presently presiding over it. We know have seen a disturbing pattern of the JIC doing the bidding of the Southern Poverty Law Center and filing politically motivated charges against Alabama Supreme Court justices in order to remove them from the bench. It is time to put a stop to this free speech violation and the automatic removal provision,” said Staver.
Parker commented no the same-sex “marriage” mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court during a radio interview.
The SPLC’s earlier attack, and abrupt change of course, on Carson was described in a commentary by Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND.
“Apparently, the racketeering outfit that poses as a ‘progressive’ civil liberties group realized it had crossed a bridge too far in its smear efforts against, quite possibly, the most respected black leader in America (and, yes, I include Barack Obama and all members of his administration and frequent White House visitors such as Al Sharpton),” he wrote.
“The group’s stock-in-trade is raising hundreds of millions of dollars through fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who love America and its Constitution. The others are a collection of actual scum-of-the-earth racists, neo-Nazis and other certifiable lunatics who, through guilt by association, are intended to reflect badly on the liberty proponents and Christians and Jews on the list, who are the SPLC’s real targets.”
He noted SPLC posted Carson on its hate list, then removed him.
“Think about how shameless SPLC really is: [retired Lt. Gen. Jerry] Boykin and [Tony] Perkins [both now with the Family Research Council] are still on the list despite the fact that the group inspired a domestic terrorist and would-be mass murderer to conduct an armed attack on their Family Research Council years ago with the intent of shooting and killing every single employee and leaving a Chik-fil-A sandwich on their corpses. That guy, by the way, now serving time in an attack that resulted in a non-fatal bullet wound to FRC’s black security guard, never made it to the SPLC’s ‘hate’ list, despite getting his marching orders from the group,” Joseph Farah wrote.
Liberty Counsel explained the latest battle front.
“The SPLC filed a complaint with the JIC, claiming that Justice Parker’s comments on the American Family Radio talk show regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision violated Canon 3(A)(6) of the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics. Canon 3(A)(6) purports to prohibit Alabama judges from making ‘any public comment about a pending or impending proceeding in any court,’ even if such proceeding is not pending before the judge making the comments, and even if the judge’s comments do not have a reasonable likelihood of affecting the outcome or impairing the fairness of that proceeding. The JIC has agreed to ‘investigate’ the SPLC’s politically motived and animus driven complaint. Under Section 159 of the Alabama Constitution, the JIC can now automatically disqualify Justice Parker from service on the Alabama Supreme Court by merely filing charges against him with the Court of the Judiciary, regardless of the meritless and absurd nature of such charges.”
The organization noted the state rule is based on an old model law from the American Bar Association, which later concluded it was impossible to support constitutionally.
“But even though the ABA has long since revised its constitutionally defective model statute to prohibit only specific comments about pending cases that are likely to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of those cases, Alabama has never narrowed [it.]”
Parker’s also challenging the state’s procedure to automatically suspend from his job a judge if an accusation is brought against him.
The previous complaint was brought by Moore.
He sued in federal court explaining that the state process for handling, hearing, responding to and adjudicating complaints against him violates his constitutional rights.
He’s asking the federal court to derail the process that state officials are pursuing, and he’s asking for damages, as well as immediate reinstatement.
“The immediate and automatic disqualification of Chief Justice Moore from the office of chief justice has prevented him from serving the entire term of his elected office, even though he has not been tried on the [Judicial Inquiry Commission] charges, let alone convicted in the [Court of the Judiciary],” the recent lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama states.
“The immediate and automatic disqualification causes Chief Justice Moore substantial and irreparable harm because he is indefinitely prevented from exercising his duties and powers as the administrative head of the judicial branch,” it continues.
He’s also prevented from sitting on cases, voting on cases and writing opinions and he’s suffered injury to his “reputation, good name, honor, and integrity.”
All of this, the lawsuit brought on Moore’s behalf by officials with Liberty Counsel explains, was done without due process, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Defendants in the cases are the Judicial Inquiry Commission, its chairman, Billy Bedsole; members David Scott, Randall Cole, Craig Pittman, David Thrasher, Ralph Malone, Augusta Dowd, Kim Chaney and David Kimberly, attorney general Luther Strange and others.
The JIC, in fact, hired a former SPLC employee to assemble its case against Moore.
The JIC’s issue with Moore involves his administrative order from last January “in which he wrote that the 2015 orders of the Alabama Supreme Court regarding same-sex ‘marriage’ remained in effect until the court held otherwise. Chief Justice Moore did not participate in the 2015 orders, which ruled that the state’s probate judges must uphold the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Act,” LC reported.
“The charges against Chief Justice Roy Moore must be dismissed. The JIC has no jurisdiction over an administrative order of the chief justice. Only the Alabama Supreme Court has jurisdiction, and that court agreed with the order,” Staver. “We are asking the federal court to strike down the automatic removal provision in the Alabama State Constitution and we are asking that Chief Justice Moore be immediately reinstated.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/2nd-alabama-justice-fights-splc-attack/
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