Alabama Ordered to Pay Civil Rights Attorneys More Than $300,000

A federal judge has ordered the state of Alabama to pay $315,000 in attorney fees and costs to the civil rights lawyers who fought to secure marriage equality in the state.

U.S. District Judge Callie V. Granade issued the order on Jan. 20.

Last June, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, Granade issued a permanent injunction requiring state officials to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples and recognize marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states. The order applied to the attorney general and all probate judges in Alabama.

Granade had earlier ruled the state’s marriage ban unconstitutional in a separate lawsuit, sparking a confrontation between the federal judiciary and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who ordered the state probate judges to refuse to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, in defiance of the federal court order.

The Obergefell decision settled that dispute and led to the eventual issuance of the permanent injunction sought by the plaintiffs, but not until after the attorney general and probate judges prolonged the case by resisting any order that would require them to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Alabama’s resistance to marriage equality did nothing but increase the amount of the legal fees,” said Scott McCoy, senior policy counsel for SPLC. “It’s unfortunate that taxpayers must now foot the bill.”

“I am hopeful that the state’s requirement to pay these fees will serve as a deterrent to any failure to recognize the full rights of our LGBTQ clients in the future,” said Heather Fann of Fann Law, LLC.

Counsel in the case, Strawser v. Strange, were the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and Heather Fann of Fann Law, LLC.