A bill to put a lottery on the ballot for Alabama voters fell one vote short in the Legislature last year, the closest a lottery bill had come in 25 years.

That may be as close as it gets for the time being.

Serious consideration of a lottery or a more expansive gambling bill does not appear likely during the 2025 legislative session.

House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, who spearheaded the effort to get a comprehensive gambling proposal on the ballot last year, said any initiative this year will have to start in the Senate.

And the new leader of the Senate, Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, said a lottery or comprehensive gambling bill is not a priority. Gudger is expected to be elected president pro tem, the top position in the Senate, when the session begins.

Bills to target crime will be a major emphasis, the legislative leaders said. They also expect proposals on illegal immigration.

The legislative session begins Feb. 4.

Here are four key issues that will likely come up and four that likely won’t.

1. Lottery — Not a safe bet

Gudger said the Republican caucus, which holds 27 of 35 Senate seats, is about evenly split on a lottery proposal. Gudger said that is not enough support to justify advancing a bill to the floor for a vote.

It takes 21 senators, three-fifths of the members, to approve a constitutional amendment to expand gambling. Gudger said he wants to avoid another near miss on a lottery proposal, which is popular with voters.

“I never want to see what happened at the end of last session happen again – we’re that close and it didn’t pass,” he said.

Last year, the House passed a bill calling for a lottery, casinos, sports betting, and a commission to regulate gambling, if voters approved. The Senate passed a scaled back version.

The House then approved a compromise bill. That bill got 20 votes in the Senate, one short of passing.

“I’m going to focus on other issues and make sure that other issues are going to be our highest priority,” Gudger said. “So as of right now, I’m just letting that kind of be on the backburner.”

Ledbetter said he had not discussed the issue with Gudger.

“The House has done their due diligence last year,” Ledbetter said. “If anything happens, it will have to be out of the Senate.”

“We’ll just see how it goes,” Ledbetter said. “I would be surprised if anything happens, really.”

2. Crime — Likely to be a priority

Ledbetter said the House will propose a set of bills aimed at fighting crime. He said the bills are about 70% written and expects an announcement on specifics in the first couple of weeks of the session.

“We’ll have a package of probably about six or seven bills,” Ledbetter said. “Our staff and the governor’s staff have been working on it on a regular basis.”

Ledbetter said the plan will include legislation to target crime in cities, including Birmingham, by establishing task forces of state, county, and city law enforcement.

Ledbetter said the idea is to expand on the success of the Metro Area Crime Suppression Team launched last year in Montgomery.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, the Montgomery Police Department, the Montgomery Sheriff’s Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined forces.

Read more: ‘We aren’t playing around’: Montgomery crime suppression team arrests hundreds, seizes machine guns, drugs

“The homicide rate in the two major cities (Montgomery and Birmingham) right now is out of control,” Ledbetter said. “We’re certainly not pointing fingers at anybody. We’re just going to try to help with that.”

“Our state is growing at a pace it’s never grown before,” Ledbetter said. “But we don’t need to have crime stop our growth when it comes to bringing jobs and businesses into the state. Property values go down when that happens. Retail sales go down. So, I think it’s a big issue and we need to address it.”

The speaker said the proposal will include funding for ALEA to help support the task forces.

Ledbetter said he has talked to ALEA Secretary Hal Taylor about the Montgomery program. He he has also talked to Gov. Kay Ivey.

“I think she is fully on board,” Ledbetter said.

3. Cell phones in schools — lawmakers likely to act

Gudger said he expects the main thrust of the Senate will be legislation on “protecting Alabama family values.”

While that includes protecting people from crime, it also involves education and the harm to children and teens caused by the overuse of smart phones and social media.

Besides distracting students in the classroom, Gudger said there are deeper concerns.

“The more social media platforms that are out there, the more that directly parallels people cutting themselves, depression, anxiety,” Gudger said.

“And the more social media that’s out there, and the more connectivity that we give them through technology, the more disconnected that I think adolescents feel. Especially in girls up to the ages of 16.”

Read more: Why Alabama schools continue pursuing cell phone bans

Other state officials have raised those concerns.

Alabama Mental Health Commissioner Kim Boswell has talked to lawmakers about research showing that excessive use of smart phones and social media has caused a rise in depression and self-harm by teens.

Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey has said school systems that have restricted cell phones in classrooms have reported a decline in discipline problems.

Lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at setting a uniform state policy on cell phone restrictions in schools.

4. Immigration — A high priority

Gudger and Ledbetter said both chambers are working on legislation on illegal immigration.

Gudger said the emphasis would be on people in the country illegally who commit crimes. He said he expects proposals to support the initiatives of President Trump and Congress.

Alabama U.S. Sen. Katie Britt is a main sponsor of the Laken Riley Act, which passed the Senate on inauguration day and is expected to be one of the first bills Trump signs into law. Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student killed by an undocumented immigrant last year in Georgia.

The Laken Riley Act would require federal authorities to detain migrants accused of crimes such as shoplifting, as well as offenses that injure or kill someone, and would grant states new legal standing to challenge federal immigration decisions, according to the Associated Press.

The Alabama Legislature has not dealt much with immigration since 2011 when a new Republican majority passed a sweeping bill, HB56, aimed at driving out people who were in the state illegally.

Federal courts blocked much of that law, including a provision that said police had to detain people from traffic stops if they suspected them of being in the country illegally.

This year, Gudger said he expects bills in the House and Senate.

Read more: Anxiety grips Alabama immigrants as Trump plans mass deportation: ‘I just felt like I was not safe’

“Violent criminals is what we’re focusing on on immigration reform,” Gudger said. “There is a plethora of bills in the House and the Senate.”

Gudger said the goal is a common sense package that does not target immigrants who have legal documents and are here to work.

“We don’t want to do this where we look like we’re not worker friendly,” Gudger said. “If somebody has a work visa or a green card … we don’t obviously want them to think that we’re against them. We are for people coming into Alabama the correct way, into the United States the correct way.”

5. Machine gun conversion devices — Bill likely to pass

Gudger and Ledbetter said they expect lawmakers to pass a bill to create a state law against devices that convert semiautomatic guns to automatic fire, making the weapons more deadly.

The devices, sometimes known as Glock switches, can be made on 3-D printers, and are a factor in rising gun violence, officials say.

They are illegal under federal law, but police and state prosecutors say a state law is needed against what they say is a growing hazard. Semiautomatic guns with a Glock switch can fire up to 20 rounds a second and are hard to control, officials say.

In December, the Birmingham City Council put a Glock switch ban at the top of its agenda for the 2025 legislative session.

Rep. Phillip Ensler, R-Montgomery, has pre-filed his bill to ban machine gun conversion devices, which passed the House last year but did not come up for a vote in the Senate.

Gudger said a Glock switch ban is important for public safety.

“There’s going to be a lot of talk about it, but I would say that that has a favorable review, I would imagine, from most of our Senate members,” Gudger said.

Ledbetter said he expects a Glock switch ban to pass and said it would help police keep the devices off the streets without relying on federal authorities.

“All this would do is just mirror what the federal law does, so that our law enforcement officers inside this state would have the ability to do something about it themselves without having to call ATF in,” Ledbetter said.

6. Overtime tax exemption ending? Don’t count on it coming back

In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill to exempt overtime pay from the state income tax. But the exemption may go away this summer.

The bill, by House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, was endorsed by the Republican majority as a way to help workers keep more of their pay and to help employers struggling to find workers.

Ivey held a ceremonial bill signing at the Hyundai auto plant in Montgomery, and the law took effect Jan. 1, 2024.

Lawmakers put an expiration date of June 30, 2025, in the bill because of concerns about how much the tax exemption would reduce public school funding.

When the bill passed, the legislative fiscal office estimated the exemption would reduce income tax receipts to the Education Trust Fund by a minimum of $34 million.

A report from the Alabama Department of Revenue shows the impact far exceeded that minimum, reducing income tax receipts by $261 million in January through November of last year.

Daniels has said the loss of income tax dollars will be partly offset because workers who benefitted from the exemption have more to spend, and those purchases boost sales tax revenue. But the Department of Revenue said that offset would be, at the most, $24 million.

Gudger said he supports the idea of employees being able to keep more of what they earn. But he said the loss of funds to education makes it likely the Senate will support letting the exemption expire.

Daniels said he will propose a bill that would extend the exemption another year and that would authorize a study to analyze the impact of the exemption. Daniels cited numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor that show 43,000 more people are working in Alabama than 12 months ago.

Ledbetter, who was a co-sponsor of the bill, said he expects more discussion and information before lawmakers decide what to do.

“I don’t think any of us thought it would cost as much money as it did,” Ledbetter said.

The speaker said he was open to the idea of discussing a deeper study.

“We’ll continue the conversations and see where it lands,” Ledbetter said.

The Department of Revenue said almost 1.4 million taxpayers received the overtime tax exemption from January through November, an average benefit of $191 for each.

7. Medical marijuana: No end to the battle in sight

In 2021, the Legislature passed a bill to authorize an intrastate medical marijuana industry to make gummies and other products for patients who receive a recommendation from a doctor.

The law created the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission and capped the number of companies that could receive licenses to grow, process, and sell medical cannabis.

Competition for the licenses is now tied up in court. Almost four years after the law passed, there are no products for patients.

Ledbetter said he is not expecting legislation to try to end the stalemate, at least this year.

“When that passed, it was passed to let that board handle it. And I think that’s what they need to do,” Ledbetter said.

“If there’s something that has to be done in the future, I can’t answer that. But I think from my standpoint, the last thing we need to do is get politicians involved in medical marijuana.”

Sen. David Sessions, a Republican from Mobile County, proposed a bill last year to increase the number of licenses, but it did not pass.

Gudger said he expects another bill in the Senate this year but does not know how much support there will be for revisiting medical marijuana, even though he said the public is ready for the issues to be resolved.

“People want to see an end to it. They want to know – is this happening or is it not happening?” Gudger said.

8. In vitro fertilization — No new bills expected

Last year, in vitro fertilization providers in Alabama paused services after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos in storage had the legal status of unborn children in wrongful death cases.

Patients and doctors came to the State House to rally for legislation they said was needed to restore IVF services. The Legislature moved quickly to pass a bill to provide immunity to clinics who feared the civil and criminal consequences of the court ruling.

Clinics resumed services. But the immunity bill did not address the court ruling that said frozen embryos had the legal status of unborn children. Lawmakers said the bill was a temporary fix.

For now, there is no indication they will revisit it this year.

“I think that’s something we’ve got to wait and see what the federal government is going to do,” Ledbetter said. “I know Trump has been very adamant about it. He’s been vocal about thanking Alabama for what they did to make sure that families could have children.”

Sen. Katie Britt, along with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has proposed the IVF Protection Act, which would make states that ban IVF ineligible for Medicaid. Democrats in Congress also have an IVF bill.

Gudger said if the issue comes up, he will consult with the two physicians in the chamber, Sens. Tim Melson, R-Florence, and Larry Stutts, R-Sheffield.

Melson sponsored the IVF immunity bill that passed last year. Melson said he does not plan to have a bill this year.

Stutts sponsored another IVF bill last year. He opposed Melson’s bill because he said the immunity it provided was too broad.

Stutts, an OBGYN, said he has delivered many IVF babies and referred many patients to IVF services. He said he believes there are ways to improve regulations to help address the questions about unused embryos in storage.

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said he will sponsor a bill to say embryos held in storage are not considered unborn children, the opposite view of the Supreme Court ruling.

Daniels sponsored the same bill last year but it did not advance.

Daniels said the immunity bill that passed sidestepped the key issue and was not a long-term solution.

Leaders in the pro-life movement in Alabama have said they would like to see lawmakers pass a bill that would put state law in line with the Supreme Court ruling on the personhood status of stored embryos.

Eric Johnston, the president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, said he believes IVF regulation is best done on a state-by-state basis, the same as abortion restrictions now that Roe v. Wade is no longer in place.