MONTGOMERY — With the Alabama Legislature set to meet for the final three days of the 2026 legislative session, tensions between the House and Senate have settled, but the last week could bring new surprises.
Typical for the end of the legislative session, lawmakers in the Alabama House of Representatives have grown increasingly frustrated with the Senate and its procedures.
Each body makes up and votes on its own rules. The House allows debate on bills before lawmakers, but the Republican Supermajority and a generally synergistic body make it difficult for anything beyond a sizeable coalition to delay proceedings.
The Senate's rules, however, allow even one member to delay progress on a single bill for hours. This is done by speaking at length at every available juncture, requiring bills to be read in their entirety, raising points of order, demanding roll-call votes and more.
Lately, the filibuster has been driven by two culprits: Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro) and State Sen. Roger Smitherman (D-Birmingham). The Republican supermajority can cloture debate on a bill, a power it did not exercise during the regular session for several years until last year. Even so, cloture on debate can only slow the filibuster and often seems to create a more vindictive attitude among the censured party.
Last week, things came to a head, with House Republicans and Democrats denouncing the perceived disrespect for the House, as the House freely passed Senate bills while dozens of House bills got stuck in gridlock.
SEE: 'A toilet that won't flush': House rails against Senate as end-of-session tensions intensify
House members called for procedural changes in the Senate to prevent a handful of lawmakers from causing such significant disruption. The Senate did pass a series of rule changes. However, most of them involved limiting the lieutenant governor's authority and made little change to limit the filibustering process.
The tensions subsided later in the week. After internal negotiations, bills began moving through the Senate. However, with lawmakers meeting for their final week, anything can happen upstairs where the reasoning for the forced delays is not always apparent.
According to House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville), the negotiations between the House and Senate are ongoing.
"We're having conversations with the Senate," Ledbetter said.
He continued, "I've got a good working relationship with the Senate. And we worked with them to try to get some of those things done, but sometimes it's not as easy as just getting things passed. There's always complications based on what other people see and think, and how a bill might could be changed or how it could be made better."
While hopeful for a concise final week of the session, Ledbetter acknowledged that there's no way to guarantee smooth sailing in the upper chamber.
"I wish I could answer that," Ledbetter joked. "I wish we'd have smooth sailing. I think the Senate worked some things out internally, and I'm not privy to all of that, I just know [from] conversations with the Senate that they had worked it out."
He continued, "It's hard to judge. Sometimes, some of the bills I don't think would be filibustered get filibustered."
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