The Foundation for Moral Law, a group founded by the intensely anti-gay former Alabama chief justice and failed Senate candidate Roy Moore and currently headed by his wife Kayla Moore, filed an amicus brief Thursday urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider and overturn its 2015 decision in Obergefell, which ruled that it was unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex couples from getting married.
The Foundation for Moral Law’s brief was filed in a case involving Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who became a religious-right folk hero when she refused a court order to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling and issue a marriage license to a gay couple. Two same-sex couples who were refused a marriage license by Davis brought a civil case against her, and she made a claim of qualified immunity.
After a district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled against Davis, who is represented by Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, she asked the Supreme Court to review the case. And that smelled like an opportunity to the Foundation for Moral Law. A Thursday press release from the group noted that the author of the Obergefell ruling, former Justice Anthony Kennedy, has since been replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, who nomination and confirmation were supported and celebrated by anti-equality religious-right groups.
“Now that Justice Kavanaugh has replaced Justice Kennedy, we hope that the Supreme Court will once again allow the states to recognize marriage for what it is: a union between one man and one woman for life,” Kayla Moore said in the foundation’s press release.
Religious-right groups denounced Obergefell as illegitimate from the moment it was announced, and are intent on reversing it and stripping same-sex couples of the right to get married.
Roy Moore created the foundation between his two stints as Alabama chief justice, both of which ended with his removal for refusing to abide by federal court decisions. In 2015, he called the Obergefell ruling “an immoral, unconstitutional and tyrannical opinion” and urged states to defy the Supreme Court’s “tyranny.” He hired Christian Reconstructionist John Eidsmoe—who former Rep. Michele Bachmann calls a mentor—to join the foundation’s legal team. Eidsmoe called Obergefell “disobedience against God” and urged lower courts and elected officials to “nullify” it.
Like Roy Moore’s political career, the Foundation for Moral Law has received funding from Michael Peroutka, a supporter and funder of Christian Reconstructionist and neo-Confederate groups and causes. Peroutka believes that “sodomite-unmarriage” is one consequence of the Union victory in the U.S. Civil War, or as he calls it, “The War Between the States.”
