HRC to examine if Roy Moore coordinated lawsuit against same-sex marriage

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign filed an Alabama Open Records request on Thursday seeking government email and phone records of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to determine his role in a third-party lawsuit against marriage equality in the state.

The HRC wants to determine if Moore “concocted an organized plan to stop same-sex marriages by enlisting two anti-LGBT groups –the Alabama Policy Institute (API) and the Alabama Citizens Action Plan (ALCAP) — to file emergency petitions to the Alabama Supreme Court.”

These same records would also reflect whether Moore violated judicial codes of conduct by encouraging probate judges to deny LGBT couples their constitutional right to marry, according to the HRC.

Last week, the two anti-LGBT activist groups, API and ALCAP, filed an emergency petition to the Alabama Supreme Court, hoping to stop marriage equality across the state. On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court voted 6-2 to take up the petition. Moore did not vote.

Responses to the petition were due at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

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“We want to know whether Justice Moore inappropriately used the power of his office to direct legal strategy in a case before his own court,” said HRC Alabama State Director R. Ashley Jackson. “Judge Moore is no stranger to questionable legal ethics and Alabamians have the right to know whether their chief justice has acted inappropriately once again. We ask Justice Moore to come clean and voluntarily hand over these files.”

Moore has been vocal in his opposition to same-sex marriage, going so far as to instruct the state’s probate judges to defy a federal court ruling overturning the state’s gay marriage ban.

On Sunday, Moore told Fox News he would defy a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality because it would alter God’s “organic law.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has also filed a judicial ethics complaint against Moore.