Alabama lawmakers start the second half of the 2024 legislative session this week with major issues pending, including a plan for a lottery and more state-regulated gambling.

The Republican-led Legislature has passed Gov. Kay Ivey’s top priority, a school choice bill that will allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school or home school.

Those issues and some others, including new restrictions on absentee voting assistance and efforts to eliminate state-funded programs that promote diversity, were long expected during the first half of the session, but lawmakers had to pivot quickly on a new topic after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling caused in vitro fertilization clinics to pause their operations because of legal liabilities. The Legislature passed a bill intended to allow clinics to resume services to families but leaving important legal questions about IVF unresolved.

Since the session started Feb. 6, the Legislature has used 15 its maximum 30 meeting days. The session can last up to 15 weeks, until May.

Gambling

On Feb. 15, the House passed a proposed amendment to the state constitution to allow voters to decide whether to authorize a lottery, casinos, and legal sports betting.

The Senate followed three weeks later by passing a scaled-back plan, with the lottery but no full-scale casinos or sports betting. Instead of casinos, the Senate plan would allow pari-mutuel betting on dog racing and horse racing via simulcast at the state’s four former greyhound tracks and three other locations. The seven facilities could also offer gambling on computerized machines called historical horse racing that operate similar to slot machines.

Both the House and Senate plans call for compact negotiations with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians to allow the tribe to offer full-scale casino games at its facilities on tribal land in Atmore, Wetumpka, and Montgomery, which now offer electronic bingo. The House plan calls for a compact to include a fourth casino for the Poarch Creeks in northeast Alabama.

Both versions would set up a new gambling commission with a law enforcement arm to regulate and limit gambling.

The question now is whether the House and Senate can reach a compromise that will muster the required three-fifths vote for a constitutional amendment to pass the Legislature and go on the ballot for voters.

No statewide gambling proposal has gone on the ballot since 1999, when voters rejected Gov. Don Siegelman’s lottery plan.

School choice

Ivey signed into law HB129, the CHOOSE Act, on March 7. Eligible Alabama families will now have the option to receive $7,000 to pay for private school tuition starting in the 2025 school year. The law creates education savings accounts, or ESAs, for families of students to use toward eligible education expenses.

“At the end of the day, we all want every Alabama student – no matter the zip code, no matter the school — to receive a quality education,” Ivey said at a bill signing ceremony.

The Republican majority supported the bill, but Democrats said the state ESAs would hurt public schools by diverting tax dollars to private alternatives.

“This is the new segregation,” Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, said on the Senate floor. “We’re just paying for it this time. Paying for it on the backs of poor children.”

Read more: Alabama school choice bill would give parents $7,000 for private schools: What you need to know

IVF crisis

On Feb. 15, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of three families who sued an IVF clinic for wrongful death after a hospital patient dropped and destroyed frozen embryos held in storage. The court found that the embryos had the status of unborn children for purposes of the state’s wrongful death of a minor law.

IVF clinics paused their services because of liability concerns. Families, doctors, and advocates came to the State House to rally, speak at public hearings, and lobby legislators to pass legislation to provide clinics the legal protection to resume operations.

Moving with urgency, lawmakers passed SB159 by Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, and Ivey signed it into law. SB159 says, in part, that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

Some clinics resumed services because of the new law. But others did not. And lawmakers generally acknowledged they did not address the central question that could lead to more litigation — whether embryos stored outside the body are considered unborn children under the law, as the state Supreme Court found.

Read more: IVF treatments resume in Alabama, but confusion lingers over embryos and the law

Prescription drugs

HB238, by Rep. Phillip Rigsby, R-Huntsville, which would add a $10.64 fee to prescriptions, among other provisions, has drawn opposition from health insurers and advocates who say it would be a a tax on customers.

But pharmacists say the fee would keep rural, independent pharmacies from folding and save Alabamians money in the long run. They say pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), third-party companies that negotiate prescription costs with insurance companies, often reimburse pharmacies less than it costs to fill a prescription. A health care attorney who helped write the bill said PBMs should pay the new fee. But nothing in the current bill appears to protect the fee from being passed along to customers.

The bill won approval in a House committee, putting it position for a vote by the full House.

Read more: Alabama to debate price of prescription drugs, $10.64 fee: Who pays?

Absentee voting

SB1 by Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, would make certain forms of assistance with absentee voting a crime.

Republicans said the restrictions are needed to prevent “ballot harvesting,” the mass distribution and collection of absentee ballot applications and ballots to influence election outcomes.

Democrats and advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters of Alabama, say SB1 would criminalize work done by volunteers, churches, friends, and organizations to help the elderly, homebound voters, college students away from home, and incarcerated people cast their ballots. The Alabama Democratic Party has said SB1 is a direct response to former President Donald Trump’s unproven claims of voter fraud and not a response to real instances of mass voter fraud in Alabama.

Republicans say ballot harvesting does occur and that it’s a big enough worry to address and should be part of Alabama state law. The GOP majority in the State House has advanced the bill on party line votes, moving it through the Senate and then the House, which amended it.

When lawmakers return Tuesday, the Senate could give the bill final passage or send it to a conference committee. Either way, it looks like its on its way to becoming law.

Read more: Absentee ‘ballot harvesting’ bill advances in House amid questions about proof

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

SB129 by Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, would prohibit government institutions, including state agencies, public schools and colleges, from funding a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office and from sponsoring DEI programs or any program that “advocates for a divisive concept.” Democrats oppose the bill, part of a wave of bills popular in Republican-led states since Trump came out against DEI and critical race theory in 2020.

SB129 passed in the Alabama Senate on Feb. 22. The House amended it and passed it on March 7, before lawmakers took a week off for spring break. The Senate could agree with the changes and give the bill final passage or send the bill to a conference committee.

Tax exemption for baby products

SB62 by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur would make baby formula, baby bottles, baby wipes, breast milk pumping equipment, diapers, maternity clothing, and menstrual hygiene products exempt from the state sales tax.

The bill, which has bipartisan support and 23 Senate co-sponsors, passed the Senate and awaits action in the House.

Defining male and female

HB111 by Rep. Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, and SB92 by Sen. April Weaver, R-Brierfield, would define male and female in state law, distinguishing the definitions from gender identity.

“There are only two sexes, and every individual is either male or female,” the bill says. “The term ‘sex’ is objective and fixed.”

DuBose said her bill is intended to protect women’s spaces, such as female-only college dorms and women’s locker rooms. DuBose sponsored a bill last year that banned transgender women from competing on college sports teams. That bill passed and was signed into law by Ivey.

Control of libraries

SB10 by Sen. Chris Elliott, a Republican from Baldwin County, would give city and county officials more authority over the membership of library boards in their communities.

The bill is part of a larger statewide dispute over children’s access to certain books, including those on LGBTQ topics. The Senate passed Elliott’s bill on a party line vote, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats opposed. It is pending in the House.

Read more: Inside the blistering battle over Alabama libraries: ‘Burn the freaking books’

Which books get challenged in Alabama libraries? See the list.

State loan to Birmingham-Southern

SB31 by Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, would revise a loan program the Legislature approved last year in response to Birmingham-Southern College’s request for state funds to keep its doors open.

Birmingham-Southern, a private, liberal arts college, is seeking a state loan of $30 million, which the financially strapped college says would provide bridge funding while it works to raise $150 million to $200 million for an endowment that it says would sustain operations.

The Legislature put the loan program, which is also open to other colleges, under the authority of State Treasurer Young Boozer, who turned down Birmingham-Southern’s loan application last year, finding that the college did not meet the minimum requirements to qualify the loan, including adequate collateral and an adequate financial restructuring plan.

Birmingham-Southern, which has said it will likely close without the state assistance, challenged Boozer’s authority in a lawsuit, but a judge dismissed the case.

SB31 would give Birmingham-Southern a new chance to receive the state funds by putting the loan program under the control of the executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education instead of Boozer. It would make other changes that appear intended to clear the way for Birmingham-Southern to receive the money.

SB31 passed the Senate and awaits a vote in the House.