Moore, Roy (1947-…), is an American political figure. Moore, a member of the Republican Party , served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama , in the Southern United States. In 2017, Moore campaigned unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. Senate .
Roy Stewart Moore was born in Gadsden, Alabama, on Feb. 11, 1947. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Moore then served as a military policeman in the U.S. Army before being sent to Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1957-1975). He achieved the rank of captain while supervising a military stockade (prison) there. He left the Army in 1974 and enrolled at the University of Alabama Law School. He earned a law degree in 1977.
After graduating from law school, Moore became a deputy district attorney in Etowah County, Alabama. In 1982, he resigned the position and ran an unsuccessful campaign to become a circuit judge. In 1984, Moore moved to Australia, where he lived for about a year. He returned to Alabama in 1985 and worked as an attorney in private practice. In 1992, Moore was appointed circuit judge, filling the position of a judge who had died in office. In 1994, he won election to a full six-year term as circuit judge. That year, Moore, who describes himself as an evangelical Christian, gained attention for displaying a plaque in his courtroom containing the Ten Commandments of the Bible’s Old Testament. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Moore for this apparent violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment . The amendment forbids government from endorsing a religion. The Alabama Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, however.
In 2000, Moore won election as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. In 2001, he installed a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery. Moore was sued again for the display and lost. After refusing an order to remove the monument, Moore was suspended from office and dismissed in November 2003. Moore ran unsuccessful campaigns for the Republican nomination for governor in 2006 and 2010. In 2012, he was again elected chief justice. In early 2015, a U.S. district judge struck down Alabama’s prohibitions against same-sex marriage . Moore advised probate judges in the state to refuse to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Probate judges handle a number of administrative matters. In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage. In 2016, Moore again told probate court judges to withhold marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Moore was suspended from his position again. Moore resigned in April 2017, when he announced that he would seek the Republican nomination to fill a Senate seat left open when Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions joined the administration of President Donald Trump .
After Sessions was confirmed as U.S. attorney general, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley named state Attorney General Luther Strange to replace Sessions in the U.S. Senate. In September, Moore defeated Strange in a Republican primary run-off election. He prepared to face Democrat Doug Jones , a former federal prosecutor, in a December special election to serve out the remainder of Sessions’s Senate term. In November, news stories detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore dating to the 1970’s. A number of women said that Moore had pursued them while they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30’s. Moore’s campaign denied the women’s accounts and said that the accusations were politically motivated. In December 2017, Jones defeated Moore in the special election contest. Jones’s victory and subsequent seating in office marked the first time since 1997 that a Democrat—Howell Heflin—had represented Alabama in the U.S. Senate. In 2020, Moore again sought his party’s nomination for Senate but finished fourth in primary voting.
