Terri Sewell

In January 2020, Sewell endorsed Joe Biden for president.

Sewell is a staunch advocate for voting rights. In 2019, she sponsored the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would update the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by providing increased oversight over voting changes, updating the pre-clearance formula to oversee contemporary discrimination patterns, and expanding the power of the Attorney General to send federal observers to jurisdictions in areas at risk for discrimination during voting. In 2019, she co-sponsored the For the People Act of 2019.

Sewell is a major supporter of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In 2019, she sponsored a bill, which passed, funding HBCUs $70 million for capital improvements and to support their educational work.

In 2019, Sewell voted in support for the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, requiring background checks on anyone seeking to buy a firearm.

Sewell wants to see the Military Widow’s Tax eliminated.

On December 18, 2019, Sewell voted for both articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump and was the lone Representative from Alabama in the House to do so.

Terri Sewell is pro-choice. As of 2018, she has as 100% rating for her voting record on pro-choice legislation by NARAL. Sewell opposed the Human Life Protection Act, which went into effect in 2019. She described the bill on Twitter as "both blatantly unconstitutional and a brazen, extremist attack on women’s rights."

In 2018, the Humane Society of the United States gave Sewell a rating of 45% for her pro-animal welfare voting history. She has a 79% rating from the League of Conservation Voters for her pro-environment voting record.

As of 2018, Sewell has a 96% lifetime score from the Alliance of Retired Americans for her pro-retirement voting record.

Sewell was again unchallenged by a Republican in the 2016 general election. She easily won a fourth term against a write-in opponent.

Sewell has a 79% rating from the ACLU for her pro-civil rights voting record. As of 2015, she is the only representative from Alabama to have a 100% rating from the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda for supporting Latino civil rights related legislation. She has a 94% rating from the NAACP for her voting history regarding legislature supporting African Americans.

After four-term Democratic incumbent Artur Davis gave up the seat to run for governor, Sewell entered the Democratic primary—the real contest in this majority Democratic, majority-black district. She finished first in the four-way primary with 36.8 percent of the vote. In the runoff, she defeated Jefferson County commissioner Sheila Smoot with 55 percent of the vote.

In 2014, Sewell said in an interview with The Birmingham News that she does not support illegal drug use of any kind, including cannabis. She supports scientific research to evaluate the effects of medical marijuana. She does not support legalization of cannabis in Alabama. Sewell has a "D" rating from NORML, and a score of 3 out of 6 from National Cannabis Industry Association, regarding her voting record for cannabis.

She has a score of "85" out of 100 for her voting on pro-LGBTQ laws from the Human Rights Campaign. She co-sponsored the Student Non-Discrimination Act in 2013 which, if enacted, would have protected LGBT students from anti-gay bullying and discrimination in public schools.

When Alabama governor Kay Ivey shared that she had performed in a college skit in blackface, Sewell responded calling Ivey's actions "reprehensible" and "deeply offensive" and that "Racism – in any of its forms – is never acceptable, not in the 1960s and not now."

Sewell was the only candidate to file for the Democratic nomination in 2012, and won the general election over Chamberlain as in 2010.

Sewell supported Obama's decisions regarding Afghanistan, citing "trust" for his policies. She was part of a bipartisan delegation to accompany Nancy Pelosi on a 2-day trip to Afghanistan in May 2012. While there, they spent time "with American service-members and meeting local officials to discuss security and women's issues."

Sewell has been endorsed by the Feminist Majority in past elections. In 2011, Sewell signed the Equal Rights Amendment. Two years later, in 2013, Sewell voted in support of reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. In 2019, she voted in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Sewell co-sponsored the STOCK Act in 2011 and the DISCLOSE Act in 2012. That same year, she also co-sponsored the SIMPLE Voting Act, to require a minimum of 15 days of nationwide early voting.

Sewell opposed removing armed forces from Afghanistan in 2011.

Sewell supports tariffs on countries involved in currency manipulation. She signed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act 2010.

In 2007 Sewell was at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where she is a member, in Selma, when then senator Barack Obama spoke during the 2008 United States presidential election. Sewell credits Obama's speech, in which he asked, "“The questions that I have today is, what’s called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy, to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?”, as being the catalyst for her serving in politics. Weeks after the Obama speech, Kirsten Gillibrand called Sewell, recruiting Sewell to run for office.

Sewell returned to Alabama in 2004, due to her father's health problems. She worked for another law firm, Maynard, Cooper & Gale PC, where she was the first Black woman partner at the firm. She was a public finance lawyer.

Sewell married in 1998 to Theodore Dixie of Huntsville, Alabama. They are divorced.

After graduation, Sewell served as a judicial law clerk in Birmingham, Alabama to the Chief Judge U. W. Clemon, In New York, she worked at Davis Polk & Wardell, alongside Kirsten Gillibrand, starting in 1994.

Since being elected, Sewell has voted with her party 91% of the time. She was a strong supporter of President Obama's policies. She has a lifetime rating of 8% from Heritage Action for America for voting for pro-conservative laws. Despite this, for the 114th United States Congress, Sewell was ranked as the 94th most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives (and the most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy that ranks members of the United States Congress by their degree of bipartisanship (by measuring the frequency each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member's co-sponsorship of bills by members of the opposite party). Sewell has established herself as a liberal with a focus on job creation. Sewell is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

After graduating from Princeton in 1986, Sewell attended Oxford University. It was there where she befriended Susan Rice. Her master's thesis was on the election of the first black members of British parliament as a book titled, Black Tribunes: Race and Representation in British Politics (1993). She graduated from Oxford with a degree in political science in 1988. She attended Harvard University for her J.D. degree, which she completed in 1992. She was classmates and friends with Barack Obama, who would not only become a lifelong friend, but be a seminal figure in Sewell's decision to pursue a career in politics.

In the general election, Sewell defeated Republican opponent Don Chamberlain in a landslide, taking 72.4 percent of the vote to become the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama. The 7th is so strongly Democratic that Sewell essentially clinched her seat by winning the primary.

Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (/ˈ sj uː əl / ; born January 1, 1965) is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served as the U.S. Representative since 2011 for Alabama's 7th congressional district , which includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly black portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery. Alongside U.S. Senator Doug Jones, Sewell is one of two Democrats in Alabama’s congressional delegation. A native of Selma, Sewell is a graduate of Princeton University, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. Before entering politics, she was a securities lawyer for Davis Polk & Wardwell. She is the first African-American woman to have been elected to Congress from Alabama, and, along with Republican Martha Roby, was one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in a regular election.