Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has appealed a ruling in the defamation lawsuit filed against him that denied his motion to move the case from Montgomery County to Etowah County.

Moore, the defendant in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said the 2017 U.S. Senate candidate made unwanted sexual advances toward her when she was 14 and he was 32, announced in a press release Monday he is asking the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals to reverse a lower court's ruling.

Moore has argued that the lawsuit Leigh Corfman filed in Montgomery should be transferred to Etowah County, which is where both Moore and Corfman live and where Corfman said her interaction with Moore occurred.

Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations made in November 2017 by Corfman and other women.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Roman Ashley Shaul on March 28 denied the motion without comment filed by Moore's attorneys to move the case.

Moore's defense team filed writ of mandamus with the appeals court on Friday.

"The question should be asked why the Plaintiff from Etowah County does not want these matters tried in her own county where the character and reputation of the Plaintiff and Defendant are well known and where the truth of the false allegations against Judge Moore can be best proven?" the statement from Moore's legal team said.



"This case has nothing to do with Montgomery County and is being brought by attorneys from Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Birmingham Alabama for political reasons to hide the truth from the public about these false allegations."

Corfman's attorneys have argued in court filings that Moore wanted the case moved to Etowah County because it would be a "home forum." And that of the nine people named or involved in the lawsuit, all but three live closer to Montgomery than the Etowah County seat of Gadsden. Those three, Corfman said, are Corfman, Moore and Corfman's mother, who did not mind traveling to Montgomery.

And Corfman argued that Moore's attorneys, in a December lawsuit filed in a failed attempt to have the election results certified, was filed in Montgomery County. In that lawsuit, Moore's attorneys described Corfman as making "false and malicious attacks."