Deja vu in Alabama
Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court is back
in the news after he, in direct defiance of a federal court ruling:
... ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on Monday, the day same-sex marriages were expected to begin here.
Moore—who made national news in 2003 when he "defied a federal judge’s order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from a Montgomery building" said:
“Effective immediately, no probate judge of the State of Alabama nor any agent or employee of any Alabama probate judge shall issue or recognize a marriage license that is inconsistent” with the Alabama Constitution or state law, the chief justice wrote in his order.
That would be the amendment and law that were declared unconstitutional by a federal judge last month.
It remains to be seen how the state's 68 probate judges will respond to Moore's order. Stay tuned.
6:14 AM PT: The ball is in the probate judges' court (and suck it, Roy):
#scotus denied stay of same-sex marriages in Alabama. Thomas and Scalia would have granted.
— @scotusreporter
6:42 AM PT: Once again, suck it, Roy:
Alabama began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Monday, becoming the 37th state where gays can legally wed.
Probate judge Alan King issued a license to two women shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Alabama attorney general's request to extend a hold on a federal judge's ruling overturning the state's ban on gay marriage.
