On Friday, Richard Cohen resigned as President from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) where he has worked for the last 33 years. A week ago Cohen fired SPLC co-founder Morris Dees, for undisclosed accusations of misconduct. Also on Friday, Rhonda Brownstein, SPLC’s legal director, also resigned.
Richard Cohen and the SPLC despised former Chief Justice Roy Moore (R) and devoted tremendous resources at removing Moore as Chief Justice. Saturday, Moore said in a statement that “It’s about time” that Cohen and Dees careers at SPLC has come to an end.
“After suffering vicious attacks from Richard Cohen, Morris Dees and the SPLC for over 20 years because of my support for the acknowledgment of God and the Ten Commandments, and my opposition to same-sex marriage, I can only say that it’s about time that their divisive and hateful rhetoric aimed to destroy our moral and religious foundation has come to an end,” Chief Justice Moore said in a statement.
Moore also included a line from scripture:
“For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be; yea thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall not be. Psalm 37: 10″
On September 30, 2016, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary (COJ) suspended Moore as Alabama Chief for the remainder of his term for allegedly defying federal court rulings by not issuing orders to Alabama Probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Those charges were based on a complaint brought to the Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) by the SPLC.
The SPLC feud with Moore stretches all the way back to October 30, 2001, when the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Moore (Glassroth v. Moore) in federal court for allegedly violating the constitutional principle of separation of church and state by placing a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Supreme Court building. That case was consolidated with another filed by the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. After federal Judge Myron Thompson ordered Moore to remove the monument and he did not, Moore was removed from the court by the COJ based on an ethics complaint brought by the COJ.
Moore narrowly lost a 2017 special election for U.S. Senate to Doug Jones after the Washington Post published allegations from women who claimed that they had been ill-treated by Moore when he was a young deputy district attorney in Etowah County.
There are allegations that the SPLC was a hostile sexist work environment.
