WASHINGTON (ABP) — Roy Moore has filed his final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to re-gain his job as Alabama's chief justice.
Moore announced Aug. 2 that his attorneys had filed a motion asking the court to review an April ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that removed Moore from office permanently. Moore was originally ousted by an Alabama judicial-ethics panel for defying an August 2003 federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument he had placed in the state judicial headquarters building in Montgomery.
In the latest filing, Moore's attorneys argue that the former judge was subjected to an “unconstitutional religious test” because he was expelled for expressing his religion. If the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Moore's case, as it is expected to do, then he has no further legal recourse. However, nothing in Alabama law prevents Moore from running for the same office again in 2006, when the current chief justice's term expires.
Moore maintains he placed the monument because state and federal constitutions required him to “acknowledge God.” A coalition of civil-liberties groups sued Moore for violating the First Amendment's ban on state establishment of religion, and U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson agreed, ordering the monument's removal. A federal appeals court upheld Thompson's ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear Moore's appeal of that ruling.
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