In this paper, a disturbance observer based sliding mode control is proposed to attenuate disturbance responses in an active magnetic bearing system, which is subject to base motion. An algorithm which decouples disturbance observation dynamics from sliding mode dynamics is suggested. This algorithm preserves the robustness of the sliding mode control and satisfies reachability condition in the presence of external disturbance and parameter uncertainties. Along with experimental results, it is shown that the proposed control is effective in disturbance rejection without any additive disturbance measurement.