Noah Feldman, Columnist

Alabama's Obstruction of Gay Marriage Must Stop

Chief Justice Roy Moore deserves to be removed from office. Again.

January 7, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Mr. Defiance.
Photographer: Gary Tramontina/Getty Images

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Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is at it again, grandstanding to block implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay-marriage decision in his state. This time his legal arguments are much weaker than they were last January and February and March, before the nation’s highest court ruled in June. And this time Moore is flirting with outright defiance and the potential loss of his post. That’s an experience he’s had before: In 2003, he was removed from office after defying a federal court order to uproot a granite statue of the Ten Commandments in front of the Alabama Supreme Court.

The legal order Moore issued Wednesday to probate judges, who issue marriage licenses in the state, is a piece of obfuscation, but not a masterpiece of it. Moore acknowledges that after the Alabama court upheld the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in March, the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently decided Obergefell v. Hodges.