MONTGOMERY — Members of the House Democratic Caucus met at the end of last week’s legislative proceedings to detail perceived malfeasance on the part of legislative leadership, claiming the Republican party ignored or stifled the minority party this session when it wasn’t hijacking billsP
The 2025 regular session was not unlike previous ones, with Democrats in both chambers complaining that their legislative efforts were being ignored in favor of Republicans.
At the conference, House Democrats derided GOP-championed bills this session, such as changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, requiring the display of the Ten Commandments, cracking down on illegal immigration and more. According to the Democratic speakers, Republican lawmakers are looking for easy wins while ignoring the issues that “really matter,” such as education, gun violence, affordable healthcare, prison reform and more.
“During the course of this legislative session, many voters have expressed that they feel like their priorities are not being heard or addressed,” said State Rep. Marilyn Lands (D-Huntsville).
She continued, “There are many important and beneficial bills that have been introduced this session that haven’t even had a committee hearing. Others have been rushed through the process in a highly partisan manner and have been hurriedly passed with no chance for meaningful dissent or debate. That is simply not how a healthy democracy should function.”
Lands’ sentiments were echoed by State Rep. Phillip Ensler (D-Montgomery), who claimed partisanship by Republican leadership. He also claimed some efforts to increase criminal penalties stemmed from “cruelty and excessive punishment.”
“In Alabama, we appear to be outnumbered by some of our colleagues across the aisle, who seem to look at justice from a very different perspective,” Ensler said. “For many of them, justice isn’t the point; it’s cruelty and excessive punishment. In the legislature, it appears that every session we see more and more bills that increase jail time for even the smallest offenses, and bills to heighten financial penalties, all under the guise of deterrence.”
With GOP supermajorities in both the House and Senate, the ratio of Republican to Democratic bills passed seems proportionate. However, House Democrats are claiming that, besides just ignoring the minority party’s efforts, Republicans frequently take Democratic bills so that the win goes in the “R” column.
“What really gets to us and some of my colleagues is that legislation that’s introduced is often ignored,” Ensler continued. “Then, all of a sudden, when there’s a crisis or a shift in the political winds, Republicans will introduce the exact same legislation, and it magically sails quickly through the process to become law, and they take credit for those efforts.”
“In those cases, we’re obviously glad to see legislation pass. But what’s bothersome is the extreme partisan process that has infected our committees, and the intense focus on who gets the credit. Instead, our focus should always be on what’s good for the people who sent us here to serve, not whose name is on the top of the bill, especially when it was never their bill in the first place.”
State Rep. Mary Moore (D-Birmingham) pointed to several pieces of Republican legislation in recent years that had historically Democratic sponsors, including cuts on the state’s grocery tax.
“They do it all the time,” Moore said. “If you go back and check the history of most of their bills that do anything for the citizens of Alabama, those are the bills the Democrats have carried for years and years. And they, even then, would not vote on them, but they vote on them collectively now. But those are bills that we have fought for because we’ve been concerned about the citizens of the state of Alabama.”
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