Katie Britt
Katie Elizabeth Boyd Britt (1982-) is the first woman from Alabama elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2022. She filled the seat long held by Sen. Richard Shelby, whom she worked for as his press secretary and later as his chief of staff. She also practiced law in Birmingham, Jefferson County, and is the first woman to serve as president and CEO of the Business Council of Alabama.
Britt was born in Enterprise, Coffee County, on February 2, 1982, to parents Julian and Debra Boyd; she is the oldest of four girls. Throughout her youth, her parents owned and managed several small businesses. She graduated from Enterprise High School in 2000. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Alabama and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2004. While at the University of Alabama, she was elected to the student government association and also met Wesley Britt, who played football for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and later for the New England Patriots. The two married on March 8, 2008, and have two children.
After graduating, Britt worked for Senator Shelby as his deputy press secretary before being promoted to press secretary. In 2007, she began serving as the special assistant to Robert E. Witt, president of the University of Alabama. During this time, she attended law school at the University of Alabama, earning her degree in 2013. Following her graduation, she practiced with Johnson Burton Proctor & Rose LLP in Birmingham and later with Butler Snow LLP. In 2015, Britt took a leave of absence to work with Senator Shelby again, this time as his deputy campaign manager and director of communication. After Shelby won the election in 2016, she continued working with him as his chief of staff until 2018.
That year, Britt left Shelby’s office to serve as president and CEO of the Business Council of Alabama (BCA). Known as one of the state’s most influential political organizations, Britt worked with the state government to reauthorize the Growing Alabama Tax Credit and the Alabama Jobs Act. The former provides a tax credit for building industrial parks within the state, and the latter consolidated and modernized tax incentive programs. As president of the BCA, she led the 2020 “Keep Alabama Open” campaign amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and she worked to boost participation in the 2020 Census. During this time, Britt was also elected to serve on the board of directors for the Alabama Wildlife Federation.
During the summer of 2021, Britt announced her campaign for the U.S. Senate to replace the retiring Senator Shelby. In the Republican primary, she faced former U.S. representative Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks Jr., among other contestants, including former U.S. ambassador to Slovenia Lynda Blanchard. (Blanchard withdrew from the race after a poor showing and attempted a run for governor but again did poorly in that election). Although entering the race polling at two percent, Britt quickly rose in the polls. Her candidacy was significantly boosted when then-former president Donald Trump switched his endorsement from Brooks to Britt. After handily defeating Brooks in a June runoff, she won the general election, defeating Democrat Will Boyd and Libertarian John Sophocleus, garnering more than 65 percent of the vote. She became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Dixie Bibb Graves and Maryon Pittman Allen had previously served as U.S. senators but were appointed. Britt also became the youngest Republican female senator. Following her election, the Republican National Committee appointed her to the newly formed Republican Party Advisory Council. The council works to increase the party’s influence across various sectors of the voting population.
Elected to the 118th Congress, Britt has served on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Committee on Rules and Administration, and Committee on the Judiciary. She sponsored a handful of bills in that Congress, including the Protecting Individuals with Down Syndrome Act, the No Budget No Pay Act, the Full Faith and Credit Act, and the FARM Act, which she sponsored with fellow Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville. The FARM (Foreign Adversary Risk Management) Act would add the Secretary of Agriculture as a member of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States and protect the U.S. agriculture industry from foreign control. None of her sponsored bills were signed into law. She also co-sponsored the introduction of a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would have required the submission of a balanced budget every year and a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to raise taxes and the debt limit. Early in the 119th Congress, Britt introduced the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain unauthorized immigrants charged with a variety of crimes. Named for a young woman from Georgia who was murdered by an unauthorized immigrant, it was the first bill recently inaugurated President Trump signed into law, PL 119-1.
In the spring of 2023, Britt and Senator Tuberville, along with other members of the Alabama congressional delegation, met with Mexican officials at the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., after an alleged takeover of the port in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The port is owned by the Birmingham-based construction firm Vulcan Materials. A month later, Mexican police and military forces withdrew from the port.
In March 2024, Republican leadership chose Britt to give the party’s rebuttal to Pres. Joseph Biden’s State of the Union address. In her response, she criticized the administration’s U.S.-Mexico border policy, citing a story wherein a young girl fell victim to sexual abuse by Mexican drug cartels. The story received backlash as it later came out that the experience she recounted happened between 2004 and 2008. Britt responded to criticisms by claiming that she intended to shed light on the sex trafficking by the cartels and not to give the impression the experience had happened during the Biden administration. Many observers in the media also criticized Britt’s stilted delivery and the unconventional location, her kitchen. She was similarly criticized for her speech at the Republican National Convention later in July.
During her time in office, Britt has been an outspoken advocate of in vitro fertilization (IVF). She criticized an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that led to the suspension of many IVF clinics in the state. In 2025, the Trump administration credited her influence on an executive order intended to make IVF more affordable. She also supports greater border security, school choice and using public funds for vouchers for private schools, and broad Second Amendment rights. She has also promoted banning the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), a legal concept taught almost exclusively at the graduate level, in public schools, though the evidence of its inclusion in public school curriculum remains under significant debate. Her foreign policy positions include support for Israel and opposition to threats to American property and technology posed by the People’s Republic of China. Domestically, she has expressed concern about funding cuts enacted by the Trump administration that would negatively affect research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Both Britt and Senator Tuberville and other Alabama lawmakers have been lobbying the new Trump administration to move Space Operations Command headquarters from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Madison County.
Britt is outspoken about her Christian faith; she and her family attend the First United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Montgomery County.
