by guest blogger Jeremy Leaming

Roy Moore, Alabama’s infamous “Ten Commandments judge,” has a penchant for misconstruing church-state law, and now he’s giving bad advice to school officials in Tuscaloosa.

In 2001, when he was serving as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Moore placed a massive Commandments monument inside the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and its allies sued, contending that the display was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

Moore obstinately fought the legal challenge, telling a federal court that God is sovereign over both church and state and that his Commandments monument was a mere acknowledgment of that fact. U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson didn’t buy that dubious argument and ordered the display removed.

But the legal battle didn’t end there. Moore appealed Thompson’s ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, which agreed with the lower court. When Moore defied an order to remove the monument, he sparked a national controversy and was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court finally put an end to Moore’s crusade when it refused to hear an appeal of the 11th Circuit action.

Although he lost his judicial platform to promote his skewed vision of church-state relations in America, Moore has continued to advocate for a society ordered by his version of biblical law. He now leads a Montgomery-based outfit called the “Foundation for Moral Law,” where he pops off from time to time.

Recently Moore took great umbrage with a letter Americans United sent to Tuscaloosa City Schools. A high school there had been showing “Facing the Giants,” a film that depicts a losing football coach who reverses his fortunes by turning to Jesus Christ.

Americans United noted that the film was produced by a Baptist church for the sole purpose of evangelism. Senior Pastor Michael Catt told a gathering at the 2007 Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., that his congregation got into the movie business “to spread the gospel.”

Officials at Paul W. Bryant High School have indicated that they will stop showing the film “until the merits of the complaint could be addressed.”

Moore wants school officials to reconsider. In a Jan. 18 letter, he claims that “the simple fact” is that school promotion of the “Giants” film does not violate the separation of church and state. The missive applauds the school for “showing their students an inspiring, family-friendly movie such as Facing the Giants” and again promotes Moore’s cramped understanding of the First Amendment. (He tags Americans United as a group bent on muzzling Christianity in the public schools.)

If school officials are serious about upholding constitutional principles, they will not take Moore’s legal ramblings seriously. The courts have long held that it is not within the purview of the public schools to evangelize students. Teaching about religion in an objective and academically sound manner is permissible, but showing students a film meant to convert them to a specific religion is not.

As Americans United Communications Director Joe Conn told The Tuscaloosa News, Moore’s “legal advice is certainly on the fringe. The school board should look to objective legal advice, not to Judge Moore.”

Jeremy Leaming is in the communications department at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.