In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could never be American citizens. They were people in name only: When free from the shackles of bondage, they had no rights whatsoever and could seek no recourse through the American judiciary.

Long-disgraced Chief Justice Roger Taney also held that Congress had no ability to limit slavery in the United States’ territory. Slavery could expand indefinitely and neither Congress nor the legal system could stop it. Dred Scott sought to protect slavery forever.

Most legal scholars consider Dred Scott the worst Supreme Court decision in history (or at least among the very worst). Not Roy Moore, twice-former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a position from which the state twice removed him because he refused to follow the rule of law.







Roy Moore believes that Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the land, is worse than the decision that kept blacks as property. Here are his full words:

“In 1857 the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property. Of course that contradicted the Constitution, and it took a civil war to overturn it. But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender or leading on, as one of the dissenting justices said, to polygamy, to multi-partner marriages.”

That’s right. According to the likely next senator from Alabama, the ability for those in love to have the state recognize their bond as equal to that of two other people in love is worse than saying African Americans can never be US citizens and thus can never have the rights guaranteed to all people without color.

C’mon, Alabama, you’re better than this.





