Roy Moore Biography

Roy Stewart Moore was born on February 11, 1947, in Gadsden, Alabama, United States to construction worker Roy Baxter Moore and his wife Evelyn Stewart. He was the eldest of five children of his parents and grew up with two brothers and two sisters.

He initially attended a high school at Gallant near Gadsden for a year before transferring to Etowah County High School in Attalla, Alabama, from where he graduated in 1965.

He subsequently obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy in 1969 and later earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977.

During the Vietnam War, Roy Moore served in several posts in the U.S. Army, and was deployed as a commander with the Military Police Corps in South Vietnam. Until his discharge in 1974, he had made many enemies among his troops due to his strict attitude towards discipline, like requiring his subordinates to salute him on the battlefield.

Upon receiving his law degree, he started private practice in Gadsden but soon began working in the district attorney's office as the first full-time prosecutor in Etowah County. He left the position in 1982 to run for the county's circuit-court judge seat as a Democrat, but lost the Democratic primary overwhelmingly after making unsubstantiated claims of cases being delayed in exchange for payoffs

He next spent a year in Australia. During this period, he helped with the sugar cane harvest in Ayr and worked at the Telemon ranch near Springsure. He returned to Gadsden in 1985 and resumed private practice after unsuccessfully running for Etowah County's district attorney position once more the following year.

Switching affiliation to the Republican Party in 1992, he sought to replace late Etowah County circuit judge Julius Swann and was elected with 62% vote in the 1994 Etowah County election. He soon courted controversy for displaying a Ten Commandments plaque and opening court sessions with prayers, both of which were declared as unconstitutional in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Despite lack of funding, he entered the race for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to replace incumbent Republican Perry O. Hooper, Sr. in 1999. He eventually defeated primary opponent, Associate Justice Harold See, and two more candidates to win the Republican nomination before defeating Democratic opponent Sharon Yates in the general election with over 60% of the vote.

He was sworn in as chief justice on January 15, 2001 and quickly stirred controversy for installing a 5,280-pound granite block monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building. In October that year, the ACLU of Alabama, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the installation.

In his judgment, federal U.S. district judge Myron Herbert Thompson declared that the monument was unconstitutional as it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. After Moore decided to defy the order, large rallies in his support formed in front of the judicial building, but despite delay, the monument was initially moved to a non-public side room before taken outside.

Once the initial deadline passed for the removal of the monument, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission filed a complaint with the Alabama Court of the Judiciary to seek Moore’s suspension. The COJ unanimously ruled that "Chief Justice Moore has violated the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics as alleged by the JIC in its complaint” and removed him from office in November 2003.

In 2004, he considered running for the nomination of the Republican Party and the Constitution Party in the 2004 presidential election, but eventually decided against it. He was an original drafter of the Constitution Restoration Act that sought to remove federal courts' jurisdiction over a government official or entity's "acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government".

Relying largely on his popularity among Christian right voters, he decided running against Governor Bob Riley in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary, but lost to him by 66.6%-to- 33.34%. He later launched another campaign for governor of Alabama in 2010, but ended up in fourth place with 19.31% of the vote in the Republican primary election.

He decided to run in the Republican presidential primaries in early 2012, but when the campaign failed to gain traction, there were speculations about him being a potential Constitution Party presidential contender. However, he returned to his former office by successfully winning the Republican primary for chief justice of Alabama in March before defeating Democratic nominee, Jefferson County circuit judge Bob Vance, in the November general election.

Unfortunately, his second tenure was also mired in controversy because of his views on same-sex marriage as he encouraged state officials and judges to ignore federal court rulings overturning bans on same-sex marriage. The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission listed to the Alabama Court of the Judiciary six charges of ethical violations by Moore, which were more serious than his previous defiance, and he was suspended in May 2016.

He filed a motion to dismiss the JIC proceedings, but was found guilty of all six charges in September 2016 and was suspended for the remainder of his term. He again filed a notice of appeal with the Court of the Judiciary in October, but a team of retired judges appointed by the Alabama Supreme Court upheld his suspension.

In April 2017, he announced that he would resign as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and would run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated earlier by Jeff Sessions. He finished first with 38.87% of the vote in the Republican primary, and defeated party favorite Luther Strange in the primary runoff before losing to Democratic nominee Doug Jones.

Roy Moore first saw Kayla Kisor at a dance recital when he was 31 and she was in her mid-teens and later met her at a Christmas party in 1984 when she was a married mother. The two got married on December 14, 1985, months after she got a divorce, and they have four adult children.