ATLANTA — Alabama's chief Supreme Court justice, Roy Moore, whose refusal to take down a monument of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse made him a lightning rod in the debate over the place of religion in public life, was removed from his job Thursday.
Citing his defiance of a federal court and his failure to express regret for his actions, the nine-member Court of the Judiciary in Montgomery, Ala., ruled unanimously that Moore must step down from his job as the state's ranking judicial officer.
By defying a federal district court order to remove the 5,300-pound monument from public display, "the chief justice placed himself above the law," said Judge William Thompson, chief of the panel of judges, lawyers and private citizens. Apparently pained by the decision, Thompson said the panel had "no other viable alternative" but to remove Moore.
The decision followed a five-hour trial Wednesday in which Moore continued to insist that it was not just his right but his duty to acknowledge God in his courtroom.
Moore, 56, a West Point graduate who fought in Vietnam, was elected the state's chief justice in 2000, after campaigning on a platform of restoring the moral underpinnings of the law. He previously served as a judge in his native Etowah County, where he began building his reputation as "the Ten Commandments judge" by defying orders to take down the 18-by-24-inch rosewood plaque of the commandments he hung in his courtroom.
After he was elected to the state's high court, he installed the large granite monument in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building that led to the confrontation with the federal court and his removal.
Despite the blow of losing his position, Moore told a crowd of several hundred supporters and journalists that he had no regrets, insisting that it wasn't he, but the federal court, that was failing to follow the rule of law.
"When a federal judge tells the state of Alabama that we cannot acknowledge God, we have a serious problem," Moore said. Next, he said, the country could lose the motto "In God We Trust" from its currency.
The nonelective removal of a sitting chief justice is highly unusual. A decade ago, the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler, was removed and subsequently convicted for stalking a woman.
Moore could appeal his firing to the Alabama Supreme Court. However, he has found no support for his arguments in the courts of Alabama or elsewhere to date -- the U.S. Supreme Court last week turned down his appeal of the order removing the monument.
