Governor Kay Ivey is fighting back against a lawsuit filed by former Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Kent Davis, who claims the Governor unlawfully removed him from office.
In a recent filing in federal court made on her behalf by attorneys William Bloom and Jordan LaPorta of Maynard Nexsen, Governor Ivey labeled Davis’s claims “groundless,” and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit in full.
The Governor removed Davis from his position as Veterans Affairs Commissioner in October of last year. According to court documents, the Governor removed Davis for mismanaging the Department of Veterans Affairs to the determinant of Alabama’s veteran community.
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“Davis’s tenure as Commissioner was marked by upheaval and disputes with other State executive branch officials,” Ivey’s filing says. The Governor said she had good cause to remove Davis because he “mishandled the administration” of critical federal funds for veterans services in a manner that “put in jeopardy” the state’s “ability to most effectively serve veterans.”
She calls his lawsuit a pure “political dispute,” stemming from his “frustration with the Governor’s decision to terminate” him — not any real legal claim.
Davis, on the other hand, alleges that the Governor’s decision to remove him from office violated his federal rights to free speech and due process.
In a position mirroring many officials pushing back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb the deep state, Davis’s lawsuit argues that lower-level executive officials cannot be removed by the head of the executive branch. He also argues that administrative agencies, rather than the top executive, have the hiring and firing power for government officers.
In response, Governor Ivey has taken a strong stance on executive power in an effort to rein in lower-level officials in the administrative state.
She argues “it simply cannot be that the First Amendment prohibits the Governor from terminating a public-facing, appointed agency head based on his criticisms of the State’s policies concerning the very agency he had been tasked with leading.”
“Absent the ability to remove obstinate subordinates in the executive branch,” she says, “obstructionist public officials could, in practice, prevent the Governor from faithfully executing the State’s laws.”
Davis’s lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, where Judge Myron Thomson will decide whether the lawsuit against Governor Ivey can move forward.
Grayson Everett is the editor and chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
