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One of the problems most everyone today has is the sentiment expressed in this thread - that the US Supreme Court is the ONLY and FINAL authority on interpreting what is "constitutional" and what is "unconstitutional".

The US Constitution established three, distinct, co-equal branches of government - the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. There is (or was supposed to be) a "check and balance" between them. If one branch has the authority to overrule either or both other branches "co-equal" and "checks and balance" goes out the window.

The Constitution gives to each branch of government the power to "interpret" the Constitution as it applies to each.

The Supreme Court, particularly beginning with and since the Warren Court, has gradually usurped the Legislature’s and Executive’s authorities. Unfortunately, since the Executive and Legislative branches are elected by the people and the Judiciary is not, the first two branches tend to allow the Judiciary to "fade the heat", so to speak, and rule on controversial issues, lest the President, Senators or Congresspersons be removed from office in the next election. Case in point, the Campaign Finance Reform Act. Congress passed it and Bush signed it in expectation that the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional.

(Most of the following is taken from Congressional testimony - "Congress, the Court, and the Constitution"):

The judicial power to invalidate the actions of other branches was widely understood at the founding to be ''departmental'' or ''coordinate''—a power of ''functional review'' enabling the judiciary to pronounce authoritatively on the constitutionality of laws touching on the integrity of the courts' own functions, for instance where a case concerns jurisdictional issues, standards of evidence, or the provision of simple due process.

This limited version of judicial review was all that was either exercised or claimed for the Court by John Marshall in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which many claim established the federal judiciary as the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.. Actually, the legislative and executive branches have a like authority to have the ''last word'' on those constitutional questions bearing on the exercise of their own powers, arising from the provisions of the Constitution addressed to themselves. Thus, that same John Marshall, for instance, held that the reach of Congress's power over commerce among the states was to be controlled authoritatively not by the judiciary, but by the people through democratic processes: such are ''the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments."

The terms of the First Amendment address themselves to the Congress and not to the judiciary, and in no way would an infringement of one of the rights therein have an adverse effect on the proper functioning of judicial processes. Moreover, if the First Amendment had been expected to be the subject of routine judicial enforcement, we would expect the subject to have come up frequently in the First Congress that debated and drafted the Bill of Rights. In "From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution", (1997) Robert Goldwin, there is no mention that the subject of judicial enforcement of the Bill arose at all. The point of the Bill of Rights was not to trigger judicial review, but to weave a love of liberty into the American political culture. According to Goldwin:

[T]o the extent that these principles of free government [in the Bill of Rights] have become a part of our ''national sentiment,'' they do, indeed, often enable us, the majority, to restrain ourselves, the majority, from oppressive actions. That is the import of the first five words of the Bill of Rights: ''Congress shall make no law'' that attempts to accomplish certain prohibited things. It means that even if a majority in Congress, representing a majority of us, the people, wants to make a law that the Constitution forbids it to make, we, all of us, superior to any majority, say it must not be done, because the Constitution is the will of all of us, not just a majority of us.

Whatever uncertainty there might be about whether the First Amendment is gathered into the scope of judicial review, there is NO UNCERTAINTY whatever about the proposition that, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment was intended to restrain ONLY the national government and not the states or their subdivisions. And, among scholars who do not hold a prior commitment to judicial activism, a second proposition is virtually settled as well: that the Fourteenth Amendment changed nothing about that fact.

On the Supreme Court the debate has gone all the other way, so that Justices Scalia and Thomas no less than their more liberal brethren act unquestioningly on the basis of twentieth-century precedents that declared that much of the Bill of Rights is selectively "absorbed" or "incorporated" into the terms of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But these precedents are worse than doubtful: they represent a plain usurpation of power by the Court, and they ought not to be respected, on or off the Court, by anyone who regards the Constitution as superior to "constitutional law."

To the extent Justice Moore holds that the federal judiciary has no authority in the matter he is right. Whether or not he may or may not be violating the Alabama Constitution or laws is another question, but one that is not at issue regarding the federal judge's opinion.