Alabama Legislature
The Alabama Legislature is the legislative branch of the government of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is a bicameral body composed of the House of Representatives and Senate. It is one of the few state legislatures in which members of both chambers serve four-year terms and in which all are elected in the same cycle. The most recent election was on November 8, 2022. The new legislature assumes office immediately following the certification of the election results by the Alabama Secretary of State which occurs within a few days following the election.
The Legislature meets in the Alabama State House in Montgomery. The original capitol building, located nearby, has not been used by the Legislature on a regular basis since 1985, when it closed for renovations. In the 21st century, it serves as the seat of the executive branch as well as a museum.
History
Establishment
The Alabama Legislature was founded in 1818 as a territorial legislature for the Alabama Territory. Following the federal Alabama Enabling Act of 1819 and the successful passage of the first Alabama Constitution in the same year, the Alabama General Assembly became a fully fledged state legislature upon the territory's admission as a state. The term both of state representatives and of state senators is four years.The General Assembly was one of the 11 state legislatures of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Following the state's secession from the Union in January 1861, delegates from across the South met at the state capital of Montgomery to create the Confederate government. Between February and May 1861, Montgomery served as the Confederacy's capital, where Alabama state officials let members of the new Southern federal government make use of its offices. The Provisional Confederate Congress met for three months inside the General Assembly's chambers at the Alabama State Capitol. Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the Confederacy's first and only president on the steps of the capitol.
However, following complaints from Southerners over Montgomery's uncomfortable conditions and, more importantly, following Virginia's entry into the Confederacy, the Confederate government moved to Richmond in May 1861.
Reconstruction era
Following the Confederacy's defeat in 1865, the state government underwent a transformation following emancipation of enslaved African Americans, and constitutional amendments to grant them citizenship and voting rights. Congress dominated the next period of Reconstruction, which some historians attribute to Radical Republicans. For the first time, African-Americans could vote and were elected to the legislature. Republicans were elected to the state governorship and dominated the General Assembly; more than eighty percent of the members were white.In 1867, a state constitutional convention was called, and a biracial group of delegates worked on a new constitution. The biracial legislature passed a new constitution in 1868, establishing public education for the first time, as well as institutions such as orphanages and hospitals to care for all the citizens of the state. This constitution, which affirmed the franchise for freedmen, enabled Alabama to be readmitted into the United States in 1868.
As in other states during Reconstruction, former Confederate and insurgent "redeemer" forces from the Democratic Party gradually overturned the Republicans by force and fraud. Elections were surrounded by violence as paramilitary groups aligned with the Democrats worked to suppress black Republican voting. By the 1874 state general elections, the General Assembly was dominated by White Americans Bourbon Democrats from the elite planter class.
Both the resulting 1875 and 1901 constitutions disenfranchised African-Americans, and the 1901 also adversely affected thousands of poor White Americans, by erecting barriers to voter registration. Late in the 19th century, a Populist-Republican coalition had gained three congressional seats from Alabama and some influence in the state legislature. After suppressing this movement, Democrats returned to power, gathering support under slogans of white supremacy. They passed a new constitution in 1901 that disenfranchised most African-Americans and tens of thousands of poor White Americans, excluding them from the political system for decades into the late 20th century. The Democratic-dominated legislature passed Jim Crow laws creating legal segregation and second-class status for African-Americans. The 1901 Constitution changed the name of the General Assembly to the Alabama Legislature.
Civil Rights era
Following World War II, the state capital was a site of important civil rights movement activities. In December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated city bus. She and other African-American residents conducted the more than year-long Montgomery bus boycott to end discriminatory practices on the buses, 80% of whose passengers were African Americans. Both Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a new pastor in the city who led the movement, gained national and international prominence from these events.Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the Alabama Legislature and a series of succeeding segregationist governors massively resisted school integration and demands of social justice by civil rights protesters.
During this period, the Legislature passed a law authorizing the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission. Mirroring Mississippi's similarly named authority, the commission used taxpayer dollars to function as a state intelligence agency: it spied on Alabama residents suspected of sympathizing with the civil rights movement. It kept lists of suspected African-American activists and participated in economic boycotts against them, such as getting suspects fired from jobs and evicted from rentals, disrupting their lives and causing financial distress. It also passed on the names of suspected activists to local governments and citizens' groups such as the White Citizens Council, which also followed tactics to penalize activists and enforce segregation.
Following a federal constitutional amendment banning use of poll taxes in federal elections, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorizing federal oversight and enforcement of fair registration and elections, and the 1966 US Supreme Court ruling that poll taxes at any level were unconstitutional, African Americans began to register and vote again in numbers proportional to their population. They were elected again to the state legislature and county and city offices for the first time since the late 19th century.
Federal court cases increased political representation for all residents of the state in a different way. Although required by its state constitution to redistrict after each decennial census, the Alabama legislature had not done so from the turn of the century to 1960. In addition, state senators were elected from geographic counties. As a result, representation in the legislature did not reflect the state's changes in population, and was biased toward rural interests. It had not kept up with the development of major urban, industrialized cities such as Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Their residents paid much more in taxes and revenues to the state government than they received in services. Services and investment to support major cities had lagged due to under-representation in the legislature.
Under the principle of one man, one vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. Sims that both houses of any state legislature need to be based on population, with apportionment of seats redistricted as needed according to the decennial census. This was a challenge brought by citizens of Birmingham. When this ruling was finally implemented in Alabama by court order in 1972, it resulted in the districts including major industrial cities gaining more seats in the legislature.
In May 2007, the Alabama Legislature officially apologized for slavery, making it the fourth Deep South state to do so.
Constitutions
Alabama has had a total of seven different state constitutions, passed in 1819, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1875, 1901, and 2022. The 1901 constitution had so many amendments, most related to decisions on county-level issues, that it became the longest written constitution in both the United States and the world. A new constitution was adopted in 2022 to remove some Jim Crow-era provisions that were struck down, along with some obsolete provisions, and to reorganize the content.Due to the suppression of black voters after Reconstruction, and especially after passage of the 1901 disenfranchising constitution, most African-Americans and tens of thousands of poor White Americans were excluded from voting for decades. After Reconstruction ended no African-Americans served in the Alabama Legislature until 1970 when two black majority districts in the House elected Thomas Reed and Fred Gray. As of the 2018 election, the Alabama House of Representatives has 27 African-American members and the Alabama State Senate has 7 African-American members.
Most African-Americans did not regain the power to vote until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before that, many left the state in the Great Migration to northern and midwestern cities. Since the late 20th century, the white majority in the state has voted increasingly Republican. In the 2010 elections, Republicans won majorities in both of Alabama's state legislative chambers, which had both had Democratic majorities since 1874.
Organization
The Alabama Legislature convenes in regular annual sessions on the first Tuesday in February, except during the first year of the four-year term, when the session begins on the first Tuesday in March. In the last year of a four-year term, the legislative session begins on the second Tuesday in January. The length of the regular session is limited to 30 meeting days within a period of 105 calendar days. Session weeks consist of meetings of the full chamber and committee meetings.The Governor of Alabama can call, by proclamation, special sessions of the Alabama Legislature and must list the subjects to be considered. Special sessions are limited to 12 legislative days within a 30 calendar day span. In a regular session, bills may be enacted on any subject. In a special session, legislation must be enacted only on those subjects which the governor announces on their proclamation or "call." Anything not in the "call" requires a two-thirds vote of each house to be enacted.