Readers may remember failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was twice removed from the bench for failing to comply with federal court orders. When Moore ran for Senate, I wrote a piece for The Weekly Standard (now available on the Washington Examiner website) detailing Moore's failure to understand much about our constitutional system. In the years that have passed, it is not clear his understanding has improved.
Moore may no longer be a justice, but he continues to file cases and represent clients. He recently represented the First Apostolic Church of East Baton Rouge Parish in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and it did not go well.
The church and its pastor, Mark Anthony Spell, objected to COVID-19 orders that prevented churches and other places of worship from holding in-person services during the early stages of the pandemic. They filed suit, but rather than argue that the state's stay-at-home orders were unconstitutonal insofar as they barred church services while allowing other businesses or institutions to remain open, Moore insisted on arguing that the Constitution bars any governmental order respecting a church's operation. According to Moore, church assembly is categorically "beyond the jurisdiction of the government."
