Judge Roy Moore, a former Alabama Senate candidate who was accused of sexually molesting young girls during his campaign, will represent a Louisiana church whose pastor has been arrested for holding church services despite a statewide "stay-at-home" order issued by the state's governor.
According to The Advocate and WAFB-TV in Baton Rogue, Moore will represent Life Tabernacle Church in Central, Louisiana. On Tuesday, the church's pastor, Tony Spell, was arrested and cgarfed six counts of violating the Lousiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' order to "stay at home."
Following Spell's arrest, he returned to his church and held services on Tuesday evening. Children, the elderly, and the disabled were among those in attendance at Tuesday night's service.
Edwards issued a statewide "Stay at Home" order on March 22 in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. While the order does not specifically give guidance to churches, it does require any business not covered in the guidelines to "educe operations to continue with minimum contact with members of the public and essential employees, while requiring proper social distancing, adhering to the 10-person limitation on gathering size. "
Moore is best known for his 2017 Senate race in which he narrowly lost to Democrat Doug Jones. During that campaign, The Washington Post published the story about a woman who credibly claimed that Moore had molested her when she was 14. At the time of the incident, Moore was 32.
Prior to running for Senate, Moore served on Alabama's Supreme Court. In 2003, he was removed as chief justice when he defied a federal order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from outside the state courthouse. He was reelected to the state supreme court in 2013 and again removed three years later for defying a SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriages.