Top ten bills of the 2025 legislative session

May 16, 2025 – the 2025 Alabama regular legislative session is over and pundits and citizens alike are left to contemplate what just changed here in the state of Alabama. Some pundits have recently said that the legislators did not accomplish much of anything this session. That take could not be more wrong, as this session yielded several pieces of legislation that will be felt if you are a parent, student, or operate a business in this state. Whether you agree with everything the Legislature did or not – this was a very consequential legislative session. Pundits saying otherwise either weren't paying much attention or are intentionally misleading the public to further their political agenda.

1) The first of these is the RAISE Act – SB305 - sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr and Rep. Danny Garrett. Alabama is a tale of two cities. On the one hand, there are cities with great schools, high test scores, great school facilities, and athletics teams that unify their communities and regularly compete at the highest levels. Then there are communities where the schools are so bad that it is borderline child neglect to send your kid there. Test scores are among the lowest in the entire country, nobody really excels, the facilities are in disrepair, and the community is more terrorized by the gangs operating out of the schools than unified by anything going on at the schools. The RAISE Act does not solve the local funding disparity between have and have not schools or address the simple fact that children from affluent homes outcompete those from impoverished homes; but it does at least acknowledge that there is a disparity there to address. Schools that have higher numbers of special needs, poverty, English language learners, and gifted will get more dollars to fund those programs. $100 million (in today's world) is not a lot, but it is a step toward more equitable funding of Alabama schools.

2) The largest education budget in history – SB112 sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr and Rep. Danny Garrett. The 2026 education trust fund budget is $9.9 billion – the largest in the history of the state and there was another $2.1 billion in supplemental appropriations that were distributed to every K-12 school, college, and university in the state. Money by itself does not solve all the problems in the American education system; but lack of funding is not a problem as Alabama schools have never enjoyed this level of funding.

3) $180 million for the Choose Act – Garrett and Orr. We are a long way away from giving parents the freedom to send their child to the school that best suits their child's needs; but the Choose Act is a start. For families lucky enough to qualify, they can send their child to the school that best serves their family's needs through the Choose Act. Far more families applied for Choose Act scholarships than anybody predicted. The Legislature responded by raising the first year of funding from $100 million to $180 million. Most students will still be educated in the socialist model that is government schooling; but this is at least an option for those families who qualify and would prefer their child not being indoctrinated by the state.

4) The FOCUS Act – HB166 by Rep. Leigh Hulsey and Sen. Donnie Chesteen. Probably the dumbest idea in the history of the world is giving everybody little portable TVs, texting, gaming, shopping, communication devices for them to carry around with them ALL the time even while they are supposed to be at work or studying. Even adults at work are distracted by whatever is going on on their phones. The phones have been disastrous in schools as students are doing just about everything other than paying attention to their teachers and most of it is centered around whatever is happening on their phones. The Legislature said "no more" and banned the obnoxious devices from the classroom.

5) The Birmingham Waterworks Board has been the poster child for government incompetence, corruption, and inability to function at even a basic level for decades. The Legislature finally had enough and passed legislation fundamentally remaking that entity. SB330, sponsored by Sen. Dan Roberts and Rep. Jim Carns switches the BWWB to a 7 member regional utility board where no one community has an oversized presence on the governance of the utility. The Birmingham/Hoover metro region is a lot more than the city of Birmingham and now the waterworks board finally reflects that reality. Will it be able to improve service

6) Cutting the Grocery tax from 3 percent to 2 percent is popular with both small government conservatives who want to see lower taxes and advocates for the poor alike. It will cost the state $120 million a year; but moves the state substantially closer to eliminating the grocery tax in total. HB386 was sponsored by Garrett and Sen. Andrew Jones.

7) HB445 sponsored by Rep. Andy Whitt and Sen. Tim Melson taxes and regulates psychoactive cannabinoids derived from hemp. People are all over the map on this one. Social conservatives wanted the state to ban psychoactive hemp products altogether. Cannabis advocates felt that the freewheeling world where one could pull into a convenience store and walk out with a six pack of 50 milligram cannabis infused lemonades and a sack full of cannabis infused candies and corn chips was a world in which they wanted to live. The Legislature strongly disagreed. Neither side in this debate got all of what they wanted in HB445. Instead of banning them, the state slapped a ten percent tax on these products and sent that revenue to the ABC Board, limited the products to 10 milligrams of THC, and limited the business to specialty stores and grocers. This compromise made almost no one (other than the grocers) happy; but it fundamentally changed businesses across the state.

8) Similarly, the state decided to tax and regulate vapes. Why anyone would think it was a good idea for your children to get addicted to a vape pipe and have to subsidize that habit for the rest of their lives is a mystery to anyone with a functioning brain; but the legislature decided it had to step in and ban sales of these products to persons below the age of 21 in HB8 sponsored by Rep. Barbara Drummond and Sen. David Sessions. Again, the Legislature slapped a 6 percent tax on vapes and assigned regulating them to the ABC Board – who has been given new powers, responsibilities, and revenues by the Republican dominated Legislature – effectively ending forever the fantasy that that agency was ever going to go away.

9) SB101 raising the age of medical consent from age 14 to age 16 was sponsored by Sen. Larry Stutts and Rep. Susan Dubose. Children are the responsibility of the parents and not the schools or the state. This legislation – while not as broad as some parental rights advocates would have wanted – gives parents the right to see the medical records of their children and gives the parent heightened powers over what treatments their child can request at a doctor's office or health clinic.

10) The criminal enterprise database bill, SB241, sponsored by Sen. Lance Bell and Rep. Russell Bedsole. There were a number of public safety bills passed in this session; but this stands out in that it gives law enforcement a shareable data base managed by ALEA to record and report intelligence about known and suspected criminal enterprises around the state. Whether it is sex traffickers, drug dealers, or retail theft gangs these groups increasingly descend on an area, make money committing crimes, and then often move on to a new area and new law enforcement agencies begin new investigations from scratch. Sharing information will allow law enforcement to get up to speed quickly on who is moving into our neighborhoods and what their devilish plans actually are.