Alabama's Top Judge: "State Doesn't Have to Allow Gay Marriage." Despite a federal court having ruled they must.

Alabama's top judicial official, Roy Moore, issued a memo on Tuesday telling the state's probate judges that they're not required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples though a federal court has ruled they must.

It was the latest exchange over a federal judge's decision in early January striking down Alabama's gay marriage ban. After Moore said he believed the ruling only applied to the state attorney general, the federal judge responded that it meant state judges had to provide the licenses.

Moore, Alabama's controversial state Supreme Court known for installing a plaque of the Ten Commandments in 2001, issued a memo to the probate judges a few hours after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear the state's challenge to ending the gay marriage ban.

"I hope this memorandum will assist weary, beleaguered, and perplexed probate judges to unravel the meaning of the actions of the federal district court in Mobile, namely that the rulings in the marriage cases do not require you to issue marriage licenses that are illegal under Alabama law," Moore wrote.

He later added that the judges "would in my view be acting in violation of their oaths to uphold the Alabama Constitution if they issued marriage licenses prohibited under Alabama law."

Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia allow gays and lesbians to wed. The nation's high court is expected to settle the gay marriage question nationwide by the end of its term this summer.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, filed a judicial ethics complaint against Moore last week, saying previous comments he'd made urging judges to disregard the federal judge's ruling were "encouraging lawlessness." The center said it had lodged the complaint with the state's Judicial Inquiry Commission.

On Tuesday, the center said it had made an additional complaint regarding comments that Moore made recently on a talk radio show about gay marriage and whether he could follow a Supreme Court order on the matter. The center urged the judicial commission to act quickly.

Dave Martin / AP

FILE -- In this Oct. 24, 2012 file photo, former Chief Justice Roy Moore poses for a photo in his Montgomery, Ala., office. The Alabama Supreme Court is divided over whether the state Legislature is acting legally by rewriting the state Constitution a few portions at a time. Moore and Justice Tom Parker have issued advisory opinions saying the article-by-article approach is not allowed by the Constitution. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

IN-DEPTH

First published February 3 2015, 5:33 PM

Miranda Leitsinger

Miranda Leitsinger is a reporter at NBC News. She started this role in February 2011. Leitsinger is responsible for long-term enterprise and breaking news coverage. Her beats include recovery from natural disasters and mass shootings, the LGBT community, income inequality, immigration and the Boy Scouts.

Leitsinger previously worked at CNN.com in Hong Kong as a digital producer, where she collaborated with the network's television staff in Asia to produce enterprise stories for the website. Before that she worked as a reporter at The Associated Press for seven years in various cities, including New York, Miami, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Bangkok, Thailand, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. She covered the aftermath of 9/11 in Florida, the 2004 tsunami in Asia, the initial military tribunal at Guantanamo and Cambodia's bid to recover from genocide and the ensuing decades of civil war.

Leitsinger, a San Francisco native, lives in New York.

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