The Alabama Supreme Court has agreed to expedite a challenge claiming Republican gubernatorial candidate Tommy Tuberville does not meet a constitutional requirement to hold the office, but the outcome of the case likely will come well after the deadline to alter the November ballots.
The justices issued a unanimous order on Tuesday to set an expedited briefing schedule in the case, granting the plaintiffs—a pair of military veterans who filed the quo warranto challenge—until August 7 to file their opening brief. Tuberville’s attorneys then have another 14 days to file their reply. Another seven days is granted to the plaintiffs to reply to that.
In all, should each side take their allotted time, the final brief won’t be filed until August 28. The deadline for the Alabama Republican Party to replace Tuberville, should it come to that, would be August 19—the date state law requires the party’s nominee to be filed with the Alabama Secretary of State’s office.
And the matter before the court is just about whether to allow the case to move forward. Should the plaintiffs come out victorious in this matter, there would still be the entire case to go.
“(The Supreme Court) did not expedite it very much,” said attorney Barry Ragsdale, who is representing the plaintiffs. “It will be extremely difficult on this timeline to get the case tried prior to the election.”
That case, of course, is about Tuberville’s residency—whether or not he can satisfy the Alabama Constitution’s requirement that a candidate for governor reside in the state for at least the seven years immediately preceding the general election. Public documents and various records reported by multiple media outlets over the last two years have raised serious questions about Tuberville’s ability to meet that requirement.
But the question now before the court is who gets to decide that. The plaintiffs argue that a state court should have a role in determining whether a certified candidate for office meets the basic constitutional requirements of that office. The defendant is arguing that state law and the constitution have set the parameters for a challenge—they have to be decided initially by the political parties and after the election by the state Legislature.
Tuberville has already faced party challenges, filed by his primary opponent, Ken McFeeters, and party officials cleared him. But the manner in which those hearings were conducted left McFeeters, and others, crying foul.
In the initial challenge, it’s not clear that Alabama Republican Party Candidate Committee members were ever allowed to review evidence against Tuberville prior to the challenge being deemed facially deficient.
In the second challenge, a post-primary challenge, party officials arbitrarily altered the rules of the hearing, cutting five depositions to just one and cutting the time for that deposition from two hours to just 40 minutes. It also refused to enforce a rule that would have allowed McFeeters to subpoena up to five documents from Tuberville. McFeeters called it a sham, and he has since filed a lawsuit himself in Jefferson County attempting to have Tuberville removed as the party’s nominee.
Tuberville has turned over some documentation along the way in an attempt to squash the allegations. Initially, he provided ALGOP officials, they said, with an Alabama driver’s license and voter registration records. He also has pointed to a home in Auburn that was co-owned by his wife and son, until Tuberville was added to the deed in 2024, as proof of residency.
His most compelling evidence, though, was a set of tax returns that were released as part of the post-primary challenge. Those documents appear to show that Tuberville paid taxes in Alabama beginning in 2018 and continuing through last year. But there were some oddities about the documents that raised questions, which were made even more serious when reporters realized that a scannable box at the top of the returns would allow anyone with a smart phone to see the full, unredacted tax returns.
What it all means is not really clear, which is why the court challenge has been filed. That challenge was initially dismissed by a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge, who said she believes there’s a compelling argument that a court should determine whether a candidate meets the constitutional requirements but that she could find no precise precedent that allowed her to do it. She recommended the case be appealed.
And so it has. Should the Alabama Supreme Court determine that the quo warranto challenge has no standing, the only other opportunity to challenge a potentially ineligible candidate would come after that candidate won the election. It would be decided by a joint session of the state legislature. Should lawmakers determine Tuberville doesn’t meet the requirements of the constitution, he would be removed and replaced by the lieutenant governor.
