Cedar Bluff town officials have taken the next step in their efforts to legalize the sale of alcohol in the town limits.

According to City Manager Rickey Steele, the municipality last week filed a request asking Circuit Judge David A. Rains to reconsider and reverse his judgment.

A referendum that would make the sale of alcoholic beverages legal in the corporation limits passed by a 649 to 239 margin on Aug. 12.

Just before the election, Carl Green, a deacon at Cedar Bluff First Baptist Church and chairman of the group Citizens Caring for Children, filed a suit to halt the certification of the vote and to prohibit the town from issuing liquor licenses in case the vote passed.

The suit named the municipality of Cedar Bluff and Mayor Bob Davis as defendants.

The local legislative act that permitted the election contradicted the general state law on liquor sales and was therefore unconstitutional, the suit declared.

Judge Rains heard arguments for and against the claim on Sept. 26, then last week ruled in favor of the plaintiff.

Steele said that ruling denies the democratic process and the will of the people of Cedar Bluff.

Local-option elections on the legal sale of alcohol within a dry county have been allowed by Alabama law since 1983, but only in municipalities with a population of at least 7,000. Such a successful vote in a municipality of 7,000 then would allow any municipality of at least 4,000 in the same county to hold its own local-option election.

Latest census figures list Cedar Bluff with a population of 1,461.

An attempt to get a vote in 2002 was struck down by the Alabama Supreme Court as unconstitutional, and the local legislative delegation again followed the desires of the mayor and town council and enacted revised legislation earlier this year.

Steele said Judge Rains will have 90 days in which to reverse his ruling. If he doesn’t, Steele said, the municipality is prepared to take it to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

Steele insists that the election was legal. It was patterned after a similar election in Bridgeport, a Jackson County municipality that has legal liquor sales although it has fewer than 7,000 residents.

“The mayor of Bridgeport is also upset with the ruling,” Steele said. “He feels it could possibly place his town’s legal sales in jeopardy.”

Steele said he believed that Rains had not been fair to Cedar Bluff. He received briefs on the case the week of Sept. 22 and heard oral arguments on Sept. 26.

“I felt, and others in the courtroom felt, that the judge had his mind made up before he came in the courtroom,” Steele said