Roy Moore, the suspended chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is reportedly on Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s shortlist to fill the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
The governor’s press office confirmed Wednesday that Bentley, a Republican, has met with Moore and 10 other candidates for the Senate post.
As governor, Bentley is tasked with appointing someone to complete the Senate term of Jeff Sessions, whom President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to be U.S. attorney general.
Sessions has earned the scorn of civil rights groups in his time in the Senate for his hard-line anti-immigration stance.
But if Bentley taps Moore to serve out the term, Sessions may strike progressives as downright reasonable by comparison.
A state court suspended Moore for the remainder of his term as chief justice of the Alabama supreme court in September for instructing state judges to defy federal law requiring them to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
Moore has a history of flouting federal law to advance his agenda. He was previously removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 after sneaking a stone monument to the Ten Commandments into the Alabama State Judicial Building and then failing to comply with a federal court injunction to remove it.
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