JUDGE ROY MOORE AND FOUNDATION FOR MORAL LAW APPLAUD ALABAMA SUPREME COURT DECISION AGAINST ETOWAH COUNTY ELECTRONIC GAMBLING MACHINES
March 16, 2010
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Foundation for Moral Law welcomed the Alabama Supreme Court's unanimous decision dismissing a trial court's order allowing electronic “bingo” machines in Etowah County. Judge Moore and the Foundation had filed an amicus brief last year in the case, titled Etowah Baptist Assoc. v. Sheriff Todd Entrekin, arguing that video gambling posing as “machine bingo” in Etowah County is an illegal lottery scheme prohibited under Alabama law. The Supreme Court quoted at length from a portion of the Foundation's amicus brief in its holding that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to rule in what was a sham attempt to get “machine bingo” approved in the county.
Judge Roy Moore, a resident of and former circuit court judge in Etowah County, commented,
“With this unanimous decision, the Alabama Supreme Court continues to hold the line on illegal gambling machines because the anti-lottery law in the Alabama Constitution continues to be clear. It is hardly a surprise that an industry like gambling that is based on deception and greed would try to manufacture a lawsuit in Etowah County to get their slot machines installed as legal ‘bingo.' The Supreme Court has done the right thing on behalf of the Etowah Baptist Association and everyone in Etowah County .”
Judge Moore and the Foundation are pleased to have played another role in pushing back against illegal gambling in Alabama. The Supreme Court quoted from the Foundation's brief in its Etowah Baptist Assoc . decision, pp. 15-16 footnote 3, to demonstrate the absurdity of the Etowah trial court's logic in approving electronic “bingo,” even though the Etowah enabling statute for “bingo” defined the game as “'that game commonly known as bingo' played ‘on a card or paper sheet.'” The trial court found a conflict between this definition and the Etowah bingo amendment's use of the word “bingo” in the very same year—findings that the Foundation said “run counter to the rules of interpretation and common sense.”
This is now the third Alabama gambling case in which the Foundation has been involved. Two months ago, the Supreme Court ruled against gambling machines in the City of Ashville, St. Clair County, a case in which Judge Moore and the Foundation had filed a legal brief. And in the 2006 opinion in Barber v. Jefferson County Racing Association involving illegal video “sweepstakes,” Judge Moore and the Foundation had filed an amicus brief, from which the Supreme Court also quoted to support its decision that the machines were illegal slot machines.
In 2001, Judge Moore, while Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, wrote Opinion of the Justices No. 373, which has been cited in gambling case after case that comes before the Supreme Court.
The Foundation for Moral Law, a national non-profit legal organization, is located in Montgomery, Alabama, and is dedicated to restoring the knowledge of God in law and government through litigation and education relating to moral issues and religious liberty cases.
