Circuit Judge David J. Hobdy barred Kenneth Gulley on Monday, Oct. 5, from acting as mayor of Bessemer and from occupying the mayor’s office, except to remove his belongings by 3 p.m. Tuesday, according to an order filed that day in the Bessemer Division of Jefferson County Circuit Court.
Hobdy found that Louise Alexander, who defeated Gulley in the Sept. 22 runoff, had shown success on the merits of her claim “that Defendants’ terms ended by operation of law on October 5, 2026, and that Ordinance No. 3424 cannot extend them,” the order says. The council adopted that ordinance in 2010 to move the start of the city’s terms to November.
Alexander took the oath of office about 10 a.m. Monday, the complaint says. Retired Judge Loraine Pringle swore her in, along with Cleo King, Cynthia Stephens-Donald and Valerie Williams, who were elected to the council this year, on the steps of City Hall while Gulley was inside, AL.com reported.
That day Alexander demanded that Gulley vacate the office and deliver its keys, records and property, and he refused, the complaint says.
Her attorneys, former federal judge U.W. Clemon and K. Mark Parnell, both of Birmingham, filed the suit as a quo warranto action, the proceeding state law provides for removing someone who holds public office unlawfully.
They asked for a restraining order before the council meeting set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, writing that otherwise “every action taken with his participation or on his signature will be void under state law.”
The complaint asked the court to combine the preliminary injunction hearing with the trial on the merits and then issue a final injunction. The $2,500 security for costs was approved about 12:30 p.m., according to its handwritten approval block, which carries Hobdy’s name over the clerk’s signature line. Circuit Judge Reginald L. Jeter’s order transferring the case to Hobdy was filed at 3:08 p.m., and Hobdy’s order, styled a permanent injunction, was filed the same day.
The order says Hobdy considered the verified complaint, the motion and a written certification of counsel under Rule 65(b) of the state’s civil rules, and that he acted “having heard counsel for the parties.” It names no lawyer for Gulley. Lawyers from both sides held a lengthy closed-door meeting at the Bessemer courthouse before the ruling, AL.com reported.
The order bars Gulley from holding himself out as mayor or exercising any power of the office. It bars him and anyone acting with him from signing contracts, checks or appointments for the city; spending city funds; hiring, firing or directing city employees; interfering with Alexander’s access to City Hall or her exercise of the office; removing or destroying city records or property; and accepting any salary or other emolument of office accruing after Oct. 5.
Within 12 hours of being served, Gulley must deliver to Alexander all city keys, access cards, passwords, vehicles, equipment and records in his possession, the order says.
Gulley is the only defendant, but the order refers in several places to “Defendants” and bars them from “voting or participating as a member of the Bessemer City Council” and from occupying the offices assigned to the mayor “and to Council Members” at City Hall. The complaint had asked only that Gulley be barred from presiding over or participating “as Mayor” in council meetings and from occupying the mayor’s offices.
The order also declares that Gulley assumed office on the first Monday of October 2010, Oct. 4, and that “for purposes of Act No. 499 of the 1973 Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature” he has served 16 years and one day as mayor. It does not say what the act provides.
Gulley told reporters Friday, Oct. 2, that “you have to have 16 years to qualify for the city’s retirement” and that his 15 years and 11 months did not, WBRC reported. He called the push to seat Alexander on Monday “simply an attempt to prevent me from reaching the 16 years.”
Alexander told WVTM 13, in a story posted Sept. 30, that elected officials do not receive retirement, but that the mayor, as manager of Bessemer Utilities, “is invested in retirement.”
Hobdy found that irreparable injury would result because the powers of the office “are being exercised by one whose authority has ended.” The order taxes the costs as paid and directs that the security for costs be disbursed to Alexander; the complaint had asked that costs be charged to Gulley.
The complaint says the powers Gulley continued to claim include the authority to appoint and remove city officers and employees, and that Alexander “holds that authority and intends to exercise it.”
Dozens of supporters cheered Alexander outside the courthouse after the ruling, AL.com reported. “The lawsuit begins and ends today with the permanent injunction,” Clemon said. Of Gulley, he said, “He will receive a pension that he’s entitled to under state law, and the city will move on with Louise Alexander as its mayor.”
The October provision, Section 11-43D-2 of the Code of Alabama, is in a 1989 chapter that covers only a city operating under the federal consent decree in Tolbert and Petty v. the City of Bessemer.
It says that on the first Monday in October after the election, the newly elected mayor and council members “shall assume office” and the terms of the present mayor and governing body “shall end.”
The state’s general law for municipal elections, Section 11-46-21, says officers elected at regular elections “shall assume the duties of their respective offices on the first Monday in November following their election unless otherwise provided in this article.”
The Legislature moved that date from October to November in 2006 without amending the Bessemer chapter, the complaint says, and in 2021 re-enacted the Bessemer section with the October date.
Alexander, then a state representative, sponsored the 2021 act, according to the Legislature’s records.
Ordinance No. 3424, adopted March 2, 2010, says municipal officers take office the first Monday in November after their election and that the mayor and council serve until the first Monday in November four years later, according to the complaint.
Its preamble recites an “irreconcilable conflict” between the 2006 act and the Bessemer chapter. At the time, runoffs were held six weeks after the regular election; they are now held four weeks after, the complaint says.
Gulley had cited a 2010 ordinance Friday, Oct. 2, saying it supersedes the state code and that Alexander voted for it, WBRC reported. Alexander told AL.com the city began using November in 2010 because the runoff date was pushed back and that the provision was meant as a temporary fix. She was on the council then and voted for the ordinance, AL.com reported.
In a statement posted on the city’s Facebook page Oct. 1, Gulley said the officials elected this year should take office the first Monday in November, Nov. 2, consistent with a council resolution, the city’s longstanding practice and the state’s general municipal election laws. “A four-year term should be a full four-year term,” he said. He said he respects the courts’ authority to resolve questions of Alabama law.
The suit attaches the letters Clemon and City Attorney Aaron Killings exchanged last week. Clemon wrote Thursday, Oct. 1, that Alexander would take the oath and assume her duties Oct. 5 and that he expected Gulley to have vacated his office and removed his belongings from City Hall by 10 a.m. that day.
Clemon wrote that a Sept. 29 memorandum to Killings from attorney R. Shan Paden had concluded that seating the officials the first Monday in November, as contemplated by the city ordinance calling the election, “appears to be the best course of action.” That conclusion was groundless, Clemon wrote, and the memo’s recommendation that the Legislature amend the Bessemer chapter to confirm the November date conceded the point: “Obviously, if legislative action is needed to move the date to November, the operative date today is October.”
Clemon also wrote that the memo explains that in 2010 the six-week runoff fell on Oct. 5, after the first Monday in October, “making compliance impossible.” WBRC reported Gulley’s win over Ed May in that runoff in a story posted just after midnight Oct. 6, 2010.
Killings answered Friday, Oct. 2, with copies to Gulley and the council, that the city “respectfully disagrees.” The city does not dispute the language of the October provision, he wrote, but it cannot be read in isolation: the Bessemer chapter directs that the city’s elections be conducted under the general election laws, the Legislature later amended those laws to seat municipal officers in November, and that change “implicitly amended” the Bessemer provision.
The city does not rely on Ordinance No. 3424 “as an independent source of legislative authority superior to the Alabama Code,” Killings wrote, and “agrees with the general proposition that a municipal ordinance cannot lawfully contradict controlling state law.”
At the council’s Sept. 29 meeting, when it canvassed the runoff and declared Alexander elected, Killings advised the council that the statute requires the newly elected mayor and council members to take office the first Monday in October, and a motion to swear them in Oct. 5 failed for want of a second, the complaint says. Councilman Cleo King of District 7 made the motion, WBRC reported.
The council’s resolution canvassing the Aug. 25 election, posted on the city’s website, had declared each council and school board winner “duly elected to that office for the term beginning the first Monday in November 2026.”
Section 11-43D-2 covers council members as well as the mayor; the order names no council member. Three of the seven members elected this year are new to the council: Stephens-Donald in District 3, Kelvin Eades in District 5 and Williams in District 6.