Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has a fan in Alabama, one who has been an old soldier in past culture war battles to get the Ten Commandments displayed in public venues.

Former Alabama State Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, in an interview with AL.com Wednesday, said the new law in Louisiana requiring Ten Commandment displays in every public classroom “is so much needed in our country,” and should be able to withstand legal challenges.

Landry, ahead of signing the law, said he couldn’t “wait to get sued.” That is likely to happen, after several civil liberties groups have vowed to challenge the law based on an argument over a separation of church and state.

“It’s a wonderful thing what the governor is doing,” said Moore, during an interview with AL.com from his home in Etowah County.

Moore gained the nickname the “Ten Commandments Judge” for refusing to take down a homemade wooden Ten Commandments plaque behind his bench when he was an Etowah County circuit court judge in the 1990s. And his placement of a Ten Commandments monument inside the state’s judicial building led to his ouster as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court several years later.

“I think it will be differently perceived in this (U.S. Supreme) Court,” Moore said. “I’m confident it will go through, and I willfully support the governor and will help him in any way I can.”

Moore, 77, said he has not spoken to Landry about Louisiana’s efforts which culminated in the governor signing the Ten Commandments bill into law on Wednesday. The new law, a GOP-drafted legislation, mandates a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” be required in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities.

The displays will be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.” The displays must be put into place in classrooms by the start of 2025.

“It’s historical and something our country is founded upon, and we sorely need that morality back,” said Moore, who continues to run the non-profit Foundation for Moral Law with wife, Kayla, from their home in Etowah County. “There is a lot of talk in politics right now that we’re so divided in our country. But until we go back to some standard of right and wrong, it’s all going to be about power in the country. It shouldn’t be. Power will not solve our problems. God will.”

Moore and his former campaign strategist, Dean Young of Orange Beach, said they believe the legal challenges will be upheld by the current U.S. Supreme Court, where conservatives have a supermajority.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law was unconstitutional and violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the Ten Commandments law in Kentucky served no secular purpose but rather was for a plainly religious purpose.

“The courts have confused that over religion,” Moore said. “God was not religion. The difference between religion and morality are the duties we owe to God. If you plug that into the First Amendment, it’s about how you worship God and not that you couldn’t recognize God.”

Young said he is disappointed that Alabama lawmakers did not lead the efforts to get a similar law passed. Louisiana is the first state to require their displays, igniting the latest culture war issue that is sure to be debated by politicians as the presidential election season heats up.

“Alabama dropped the ball,” Young said, adding that state lawmakers nationwide now have a “blueprint” by which to go by with Louisiana’s new law.

“It takes a governor to stand up for what is right,” said Young, a former Republican congressional candidate in South Alabama. “That’s what they have in Louisiana.”

Moore gained his reputation as a staunch defender of the Ten Commandments for his legal tussles with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups for his refusal to remove the displays. After he was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, Moore commissioned the display of a 2-1/2-ton granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments and had it placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building in downtown Montgomery.

A federal judge ruled the display unconstitutional in 2002, but Moore refused to have it taken out of the building. A state panel then ruled Moore had violated the judicial ethics code, and he was removed from the bench.

The Ten Commandments standoff led to national fame, and Moore did consider a presidential bid in 2012. He, instead, won back his state Supreme Court seat in a competitive race against Democrat Bob Vance. Moore did not bring back the Ten Commandments display, but he was suspended for ordering state judges to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2015 legalizing same-sex marriage and instead have them enforce a state ban on such marriages.

Moore’s age prevented him from running for the Supreme Court again. He, instead, ran for the U.S. Senate in a special Senate election in 2017. Moore won a crowded GOP primary and easily defeated then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange in the runoff.

He was then defeated by Democratic challenger Doug Jones by a narrow margin in a contest that drew international attention. Moore’s candidacy unraveled about a month before the election after controversy surfaced about alleged sexual misconduct he had decades ago with teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

Moore ran again for the Senate in 2020, but he finished a distant fourth place in that year’s GOP primary won by Tommy Tuberville.