After defying a federal court order and drawing hundreds of cheering Christian activists to this capital city, Alabama's crusading chief justice conceded today and said that he will not try to block the removal of his 2-ton Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Supreme Court building.
"He will not interfere," Stephen Melchior, the lead attorney for Chief Justice Roy S. Moore, said in an interview.
Moore's concession was not enough, however, to stop the Alabama Judiciary Inquiry Commission from suspending him with pay for violating the federal court order. The commission referred a complaint about Moore to the Alabama Court of the Judiciary, which can hold hearings and discipline or remove judges.
The suspension drew angry reprisals from demonstrators, who have massed outside the Supreme Court for three days of prayer vigils.
"This is an earthquake that will be felt from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America," said John W. Giles, president of the Alabama Christian Coalition.
The legal fight over the monument, which has come to be known as "Roy's Rock," is sure to continue, Melchior said, even as Moore's fellow justices finalize plans to shift the monument to a nonpublic area of the court building or remove it.
Moore's suspension and the slow realization that he is powerless to stop the monument's removal did not deter demonstrators, many of whom clung to hope that a miracle would change the outcome of a case that has ignited passionate debate for months and solidified the chief justice's iconic status among Christian conservatives.
"Maybe they can move the monument, but they can't take it out of our hearts," said Rich Kendall, 52, who stood steps from the courthouse doors with a 10-foot-tall wooden cross that read "Jesus Died For You."
It increasingly appears that the monument will be moved to a nonpublic area of the court building. Associate justices have even been investigating whether it is heavy enough to crash through the unreinforced floors in private offices and elevators. Despite those signals, activists outside the courthouse remained wary that the monument would eventually be taken out of the building. They are maintaining 24-hour watches and vowing to risk arrest to keep it inside.
"The monument is not coming out with us here," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, which has spearheaded the demonstrations.
Moore's attorneys announced that he would not interfere with the monument's removal after pointed questioning by U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson during a telephone conference this morning. Moore, who has said Thompson was placing himself "above God" by ordering the monument's removal, had defied the federal order to remove the monument by midnight Wednesday. During the hearing, attorneys said, Thompson specifically asked Moore if he would interfere with the removal of the monument, and the chief justice's attorneys said he would not.
Moore yielded after all eight associate justices of the Alabama Supreme Court took the rare step of overruling him Thursday, and ordered the building manager to remove the monument. Melchior said the wording of the associate justices' order was critical: Because they directed the order to remove the monument at the building manager, rather than Moore, the chief justice felt he could step aside without "violating his oath to uphold the Alabama Constitution and the U.S. Constitution."
Ever since his surprise installation of the monument in the summer of 2001, Moore has argued that it had a proper place in the court building because it illustrated "the moral foundation of law" in America. Coral Ridge Ministries, an evangelical group from Florida, videotaped the installation, which took place after Moore's fellow justices had gone home for the evening, and sold tapes to pay for his legal defense.
Moore was sued by three Alabama attorneys -- representing the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- and had lost a series of appeals after Thompson's initial ruling that the monument was unconstitutional.
Ayesha Khan, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said this morning that she would not push for Moore to be held in contempt or for $5,000-a-day fines to be imposed, though she criticized the justice for failing to follow Thompson's order.
"This case has been about politics all along," she said. "Now he gets to point the finger at the other eight justices."
Moore's legal options are dwindling, as is support among Alabama officials for his quest to keep the monument in the rotunda. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay in the case, but further appeals are planned by Moore's legal team.
"This fight isn't over," Melchior said.
But, on the steps outside the Alabama courthouse, the talk was shifting to broader themes.
"It's not about the rock," said Larry Wilson, 36, a Nashville paramedic who drove to Montgomery late Thursday with his wife and son. "We're here because the chief justice has acknowledged God and God's law."
Behind Wilson, a man slept on an Army-green blanket, and a little boy peered through a great bank of glass doors to catch a glimpse of a hunk of granite that everyone around him is waiting to see disappear.