The Alabama Supreme Court Sidesteps the Question of Residency and Keeps Alabama Courts out of Candidate Eligibility Disputes
November 3, 2026
By Elizabeth Flachbart
The drawn-out legal battle over Senator Tommy Tuberville’s gubernatorial candidacy, and Alabama’s residency requirements, came to an end in early October at the Alabama Supreme Court. As discussed in my previous article covering this litigation, Tuberville’s Republican primary opponent, Ken McFeeters, challenged whether Tuberville met Alabama’s constitutional requirement that governors have been Alabama residents for seven years. Formal litigation began after McFeeters launched an unsuccessful challenge before the Alabama Republican Party. After McFeeters filed in Alabama circuit court, the court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Alabama’s jurisdiction-stripping statute, which heavily restricts the types of election suits Alabama courts can hear. On October 9th, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the circuit court’s dismissal. The court did not evaluate whether Tuberville met the residency requirement (as that issue was not before the court). The Supreme Court simply concluded that the circuit court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case at all.
In its opinion, the Alabama Supreme Court held that Alabama courts were not the proper venue to challenge a candidate’s eligibility. The court looked to Title 17, Chapter 13 of the Alabama Code, which includes provisions governing primary elections and political parties. The court pointed to these statutes as laying out the proper mechanism for challenging a candidate’s eligibility. The court specifically looked to § 17-13-70 and § 17-13-71. These provisions allow for contests to a party’s nomination to be filed with the state political party and provide that “[s]uch contest[s] shall be heard and tried by the county executive committee . . . and wherever there is no county executive committee consisting of enough members to obtain a quorum, then by the state executive committee.”
The statute further creates a trial-like structure for these eligibility contest hearings, granting the party authority to summon witnesses and subpoena documents, transforming the party executive committee into a tribunal. The Court further hearkens to precedent to conclude that this statutory grant of dispute-resolution power to political parties is not only a choice of mechanism of resolving an eligibility dispute, but the only means of resolving challenges to a candidate’s eligibility under Alabama law. The court first quotes the opinion from Ex Parte Baxley, stating, “For over 50 years, the courts in this state have adhered to the legislative mandate that political parties are empowered to settle their own disputes in primary elections. . . . It vested in political parties in primary disputes quasi-judicial authority and such discretion as courts of limited jurisdiction exercise.” The court also held that, once invoked, a party’s jurisdiction over the eligibility dispute is exclusive, citing Ex Parte Skidmore, and that there is also no statutory right to appeal a party’s ultimate finding to an Alabama court, citing Ex Parte Graddick. After piecing together all this precedent, the court holds that bringing a challenge before the state political party is “the exclusive method authorized by law to challenge a party nominee’s qualification for office before the general election.”
This decision leaves the policing of candidate eligibility requirements, and in this case, a state constitutional requirement, to political parties. The Alabama Supreme Court cites the underlying policy reason for why parties are best suited to decide challenges to their candidates — avoiding state interference with the political organization and associational rights of citizens who compose political parties and choose candidates. Although respecting individuals’ associational rights under the First Amendment is certainly important, this set-up seems intuitively problematic if we believe that the fairest way to resolve a legal dispute is via decision by an impartial fact-finder. The executive committees of political parties are made up of inherently partisan, biased actors, who have great interests in the outcomes of elections.
When we give judicial authority to courts to resolve disputes, the tradeoff is traditionally made with the idea that the power will be wielded by a neutral arbiter, and that their decision can be subject to review by another neutral arbiter if there is any legal error. Forcing individuals who seek to enforce eligibility requirements to trust leaders of a political party seems to violate this tradeoff. To not only invest political parties with the powers of a court (like the power of subpoena), but also the exclusive jurisdiction to resolve disputes over eligibility requirements ultimately does not seem to create a system of legitimacy and fairness. Can we really trust political parties to be unbiased judges over the candidates that they themselves have endorsed, or a party whose control over the seats of power in a state could be wrecked by a disqualified candidate? It seems better to have courts available as a check on this power, especially when state constitutional requirements are involved.