The Southern Poverty Law Center’s case against conservative Alabama judge just backfired

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) may come to regret the battle they started with Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker.

A failed complaint against Justice Parker with the Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) led the Alabama judge to fight back against several of the state’s judicial ethics rules, including one that would automatically remove a judge from the bench and block them from receiving pay once they’ve been charged with ethics violations.

Though Parker faced investigation for an SPLC-led complaint, he was never charged or convicted. However, his effort to push back on the judicial ethics rules has been revived by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

11th Circuit Court said Parker’s claim deserved further consideration “to consider the issue of mootness, in addition to any other arguments considering jurisdiction and the merits of the complaint.”

The SPLC initially filed a complaint against Justice Parker for comments that he made during a 2015 guest appearance on “Focal Point,” a Christian-based radio show. During Parker’s interview, he said that the Supreme Court “jumped outside all precedents to impose their will on the country” when they legalized gay marriage through the case of Obergefell v. Hodges.

At the time, the SPLC claimed that Parker stepped outside of his official bounds by making such comments on an “extremist” show. They pointed to Alabama’s Canon 3(A)(6), which supposedly prohibits judges from making “any public comment about a pending or impending proceeding in any court.”

The rule includes proceedings that are not pending before the accused judge, and even apply when the judge’s comments would have no affect on the outcome or fairness of that proceeding. It’s a rule so restrictive that Parker’s legal counsel, Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, said the American Bar Association has even acknowledged that the “broad speech restriction violates the First Amendment.”

Staver has also worked to defend Roy Moore from the JIC’s punishments. He said in a statement that he would continue to press the case “until we receive justice.”

“The judicial canon that prohibits judges from commenting on any case anywhere in the country is patently unconstitutional,” said Staver. “Every judge who teaches law school students would be silenced by this broad restriction on speech. The automatic removal provision is also unconstitutional because judges are deprived of due process. Our system of law presumes innocence until proven guilty but the automatic removal provision turns this cornerstone of justice on its head.”