John Eidsmoe, the prominent Christian Reconstructionist attorney who works for Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law, joined conservative radio host Jerry Newcombe on his show Thursday to discuss Moore’s stand against the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, which has gotten him suspended from his post.
Eidsmoe accused Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg of staging a “political coup” by choosing not to recuse themselves from hearing the Obergefell case and declared that state courts and state legislatures have the "duty” to “nullify” the decision.
Eidsmoe first justified Moore’s actions claiming that the Supreme Court decision applied specifically to four states, not Alabama.
“But even more than that,” he said, “what I think we’re gonna argue here is that this particular decision is so egregious that the state courts, state legislatures and the like have a right and a duty to nullify and disregard it.”
He claimed the decision was “without constitutional support,” “arrived at by illegitimate means,” and “seeks to redefine the institution of marriage.”
“I don’t think any governmental body, especially a group of unelected judges, has the authority to redefine God’s institution of marriage,” Eidsmoe said.
Eidsmoe also compared Alabama courts’ rejection of Obergefell to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s rejection of the Dred Scott decision.
He criticized Ginsburg and Kagan for not recusing themselves because they had previously performed weddings for same-sex couples.
“There’s really only one reason that they refused to recuse themselves,” he said, “and that’s they knew that their votes were needed to get a 5-4 majority in this case, and it is as raw a political coup as you could ever imagine, complicated by the fact that it is by those who are supposed to be considered the least dangerous branch of government and the least likely people that you’d think would be undermining our constitutional system with a coup.”
