Roy Moore: Impeach Judge Who Blocked Trump’s ‘Transgenderism’ Order

Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore said Monday night that the federal judge who issued an injunction against President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military “should be impeached.”

The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Moore said in a statement shared with TPM, “is absolutely ridiculous and is a perfect example of the outlandish doctrine of judicial supremacy whereby judges exalt themselves over the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.” (Read Moore’s full statement below.) 

Kollar-Kotelly granted a preliminary injunction Monday to stop Trump’s policy — which began with a tweet — from going into immediate effect.

Moore said the American Psychiatric Association considered, in his words, “transgenderism to be a mental disorder” until 2013. (The APA’s board of trustees approved the removal of “gender identity disorder” from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in late 2012, replacing it with “gender dysphoria.”)

“And only in 2016 did the Obama administration attempt to impose that delusion upon our fighting forces,” Moore continued. “To say that President Trump cannot prohibit transgenderism in the military is a clear example of judicial activism. Even the United States Supreme Court has never declared transgenderism to be a right under the Constitution.”

Moore was suspended twice from his post as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, once for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the courthouse, violating a federal court order, and again years later for instructing probate judges to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring them to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

He said in November 2016 that that ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, was worse than Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Moore showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the law on Oct. 18, when he said it was “against the law” for NFL players to kneel during the national anthem as part of a protest against racism and police brutality. (It isn’t.)

Read Moore’s full statement below:

“The decision of a federal judge in the District of Columbia enjoining President Trump’s executive order on transgenderism in the military is absolutely ridiculous and is a perfect example of the outlandish doctrine of judicial supremacy whereby judges exalt themselves over the Constitution they are sworn to uphold. As recently as 2013, the American Psychiatric Association considered transgenderism to be a mental disorder. And only in 2016 did the Obama administration attempt to impose that delusion upon our fighting forces. To say that President Trump cannot prohibit transgenderism in the military is a clear example of judicial activism. Even the United States Supreme Court has never declared transgenderism to be a right under the Constitution.

“Judge Kollar-Kotelly should be impeached by the House of Representatives for unlawful usurpation of power (Article II, § 4) and lack of good behavior (Article III, § 1), and referred to the Senate for a vote on removal. Not only has she placed herself above the Constitution in finding such a nonexistent right, but she has also interfered with the powers of the President as Commander in Chief of the armed forces under Article II, § 2, of the Constitution.

“Unless we return to faithful obedience to the Constitution and the separation of powers set out therein, our form of government and our liberties will be in dire jeopardy. Congress should not turn a deaf ear to this flagrant usurpation of executive authority.”