Jay Mitchell, who resigned from the Alabama Supreme Court to run for attorney general, launched his campaign Monday.

In a press release, Mitchell said he is a conservative who would support President Donald Trump’s policies in Alabama.

“With President Trump in the White House, we have a unique opportunity to get conservative wins here in Alabama,” Mitchell said. “I’m running for Attorney General to stop the lawlessness, restore order, and dismantle Joe Biden’s radical left wing policies.”

Mitchell is the second Republican to enter the race. Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey announced she was running in January.

Mitchell wrote the Alabama Supreme Court opinion last year that caused a temporary pause in in vitro fertilization services in Alabama.

Casey, who has had two children through IVF, has said the ruling was political, not logical, and that it would be an issue in the campaign.

Mitchell did not mention the IVF ruling in his campaign announcement.

Mitchell said he would focus on the following issues:

• Crack Down on Violent Crime: “Alabama is safer when criminals face real consequences. I will lock up violent offenders and make sure they stay locked up.”
• Enforce Immigration Law : “I will make sure that Alabama does its part to aggressively pursue mass deportations.”
• Back the Blue: “Our law enforcement officers are the thin blue line between order and chaos. They have my steadfast support.”
• Defend the Sanctity of Life: “No matter the cost, I will stand firm to protect the unborn.”
• Fight the Woke Agenda: “No boys in girls’ sports. No DEI. No more woke nonsense.”

The attorney general’s race is an open seat because Attorney General Steve Marshall is in his second full term and is barred by term limits from another.

Marshall announced last week he is running for the U.S. Senate seat that Tommy Tuberville is leaving to run for governor.

Mitchell was elected to the nine-member Alabama Supreme Court in 2018 and reelected to another six-year term last year.

Before his election to the Supreme Court, Mitchell was a lawyer with the Maynard, Cooper & Gale firm, which is now the Maynard Nexsen firm.

Mitchell was born in Mobile and grew up in south Alabama and in Homewood.

He graduated from Homewood High School and received a bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, served as president of the student body, and played forward on the school’s 1995 national championship basketball team.

Mitchell wrote the main Alabama Supreme Court opinion last year in a ruling that frozen embryos held in storage by IVF clinics had the legal status of children under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

The ruling came in lawsuits filed by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile.

Six of the other eight justices on the Alabama Supreme Court concurred in the result. One concurred in part and dissented in part. One justice dissented.

IVF clinics put services on hold because of the legal liability resulting from the ruling.

IVF providers and families flocked to Montgomery to urge the Legislature to address the issue.

Lawmakers quickly passed a bill intended to give clinics immunity, and most services resumed.

The bill did not address the issue of whether frozen embryos held in storage should be considered unborn children under the wrongful death law, which Mitchell and most of the other justices ruled.

“This Court has long held that unborn children are ‘children’ for purposes of Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act,” Mitchell wrote in the main opinion.

“The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children — that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed.

“Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”

Casey, in an interview last month, said she sympathized with the couples who sued.

“I can’t imagine what the families went through who had that happen at the fertility clinic,” Casey said. “I would have been devastated had I gotten a call that embryos had been destroyed.

“But I also think that decision was very political versus being logical and I think it was done for political gain.”

Casey declined to elaborate on why she thought the ruling was political.

Mitchell, in his court opinion, acknowledged the potential impact of the ruling on IVF providers because of the liability concerns. But he said the court was bound by the law, not the consequences.

The primary is May 19, 2026.