Former Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs commissioner Kent Davis filed a lawsuit against Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday in response to his termination last year.
Davis filed the federal lawsuit in the Middle District of Alabama. The lawsuit in part states Ivey’s actions surrounding the termination of Davis was unconstitutional, retaliation for his ethics complaint against a member of Ivey’s cabinet and defamatory.
Ivey used her alleged “supreme executive authority” to fire Davis in October 2024. The ADVA commissioner reports to the State Board of Veterans Affairs (SBVA). Ivey had called two special-called meetings to try to remove Davis by a board vote.
Ivey maintained that ADVA mishandled American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. An SBVA committee approved a report at a meeting on October 9 stating Davis and ADVA did nothing wrong with the funds.
Davis filed an ethics complaint in August at the request of SBVA members against Alabama Department of Mental Health commissioner Kim Boswell for allegedly preventing ADVA from obtaining $7 million in ARPA funds. The Alabama Ethics Commission later dismissed the complaint.
“Davis’s constitutionally protected speech was encompassed in an official ethics complaint filed with the Alabama Ethics Commission and in other forms of speech. Those items of constitutionally protected speech regarded matters of public interest and concern, specifically including, but not limited to, his criticism of the Alabama legislature's cuts to the GI Dependent Scholarship program; his criticism of the legislature's general lack of support for veterans' mental health programs; his criticism of false criminal allegations by Rep. Ed Oliver directed at the quality of care in our state veterans homes; his criticism of the legislature for not providing more ARPA funds, opioid settlement funds, or General Fund dollars to address critical problems with veterans mental health; and his criticism of Defendant Ivey for never having visited a single one of the seventy facilities statewide overseen by ADVA,” Kenneth Mendelsohn, Davis’ attorney, wrote in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday. “Said speech played a substantial part in Ivey’s decision to unlawfully terminate Davis from his statutorily appointed position of Commissioner of the ADVA.”
He continued, “Ivey was not legally afforded the discretion to fire Davis and was in fact prohibited by law from firing him. Ivey’s actions were for her own personal and vindictive reasons and were willful, malicious, illegal, fraudulent, in bad faith, beyond her authority, and/or at the very least under a mistaken interpretation of the law.”
“An actual and judiciable controversy exists between the parties with respect to the legality of Ivey’s purported termination of Davis. On the one hand Davis claims that pursuant to Code of Alabama § 31-5-6, he could only be terminated by the SBVA for cause which the SBVA voted not to do. On the other hand, Ivey claims that she had the “supreme executive power” to disregard the law and Davis’s constitutional rights and to terminate Davis,” Mendelsohn said. “This Count requests that the Court settle and afford relief from uncertainty and insecurity with respect to rights, status, and other legal relations between the parties.”
2025.6.11 Filed Complaint by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
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