Voters sue to stop proposals on courts, juvenile crime from appearing on state ballots

17th March 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Katie Jane Fernelius
Contributing Writer

(Veritenews.org) – A criminal justice reform group in New Orleans is seeking to stop the state from putting two proposed amendments to the state constitution in front of Louisiana voters in the March 29 election.

In a suit filed on Monday, March 10, in Baton Rouge, New Orleans-based nonprofit Voice of the Experienced, along with five voters from southeast Louisiana, allege that members of the state legislature violated the law when they approved proposed Amendment 1 and Amendment 3 to appear on ballots across the state.

“They want people to respect the law, but they don’t follow it themselves,” said Norris Henderson, VOTE’s founder and executive director, in a news release issued last Tuesday.

This is at least the second lawsuit targeting the slate of proposed amendments up for a vote on March 29. Another suit, filed by attorney William Most last month, argues that ballot language for Amendment 2 – which would rework much of the state tax code – is misleading. Meanwhile, Baton Rouge pastor Tony Spell – who was previously aligned with Gov. Jeff Landry while challenging public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic – has publicly criticized the Landry-backed Amendment 2, arguing that it could make it easier to remove tax exemptions for religious institutions.

Both of the amendments targeted by VOTE’s suit – based on bills passed during the legislature’s fall 2024 special session on taxes – are related to the state’s justice system. And both would give legislators more power over the courts.

Amendment 1 would do two things: clarify that the state Supreme Court has the authority to hand down discipline to out-of-state attorneys accused of misconduct while they are working in Louisiana; and allow the legislature to create new specialty courts around the state. The latter provision is by far the more controversial.

Proponents have argued that the amendment will give legislators more flexibility to create specialized courts – such as courts that focus on complex business disputes – but opponents of the amendment say that the amendment in actuality will allow the legislature to create new courts that could effectively usurp the jurisdiction of elected parish judges. They point to Jackson, Mississippi, where state lawmakers created in 2023 a court district with state-appointed judges, fearing the same thing could happen in Louisiana’s Democratic strongholds such as New Orleans.

“The idea here is that the legislature basically wants to create courts that they can they can control, stacking them with judges who will serve their interests, and that ultimately, this is going to take power away from the Supreme Court and from our voters,” said Sarah Whittington, the director of advocacy at the ACLU of Louisiana.

Amendment 3 would let the legislature determine which state laws can result in children under the age of 17 being tried as adults, resulting in far lengthier sentences than they would likely face if tried as juveniles. If passed, it would remove a section of the state constitution that lists specific felonies where a juvenile may be tried as an adult, including first- or second-degree murder and armed robbery, among other serious crimes.

Proponents say it will give the legislature a greater ability to tackle serious youth crime, but opponents worry it will be used to lock up kids for relatively minor crimes. An investigation by Verite News and ProPublica found that most of the youths impacted by a 2024 revision to the state’s criminal code – lowering the age of adult jurisdiction from 18 to 17, reversing previous “raise the age” legislation passed only a few years prior – were accused of committing minor, nonviolent crimes.

Without specific crimes outlined in the state constitution, lawmakers can more readily expand the list through a two-thirds supermajority vote.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys for VOTE, alleges that the Louisiana Legislature violated the legislative process required to bring proposed constitutional amendments to the ballot, cir-cum-venting typical procedures outlined in the state constitution in order to ram through Amendments 1 and 3.

According to the suit, the legislative bill that became Amendment 1 during a special legislative session late last year did not go through all the legally required steps for a proposed constitutional amendment. The suit claims that the first House committee that vetted the bill after it passed the Senate – voting it down 5-7 – did not record and report the results of that vote before passing it along to another committee and ultimately, to the House floor. That is in spite of provisions in the state constitution and House internal rules that the plaintiffs allege require such a report. The plaintiffs also allege that the amendment makes too many changes, in violation of a state constitutional provision requiring that proposed amendments “be confined to one object.”

As for Amendment 3, the lawsuit argues that legislators went beyond what Gov. Jeff Landry asked them to do when they approved the original bill during the fall special session.

The governor asked for an amendment “regarding the crimes that are not subject to special juvenile procedures.” But the legislature instead crafted an amendment that only addressed crimes that are subject to special juvenile procedures – by removing them.

“In other words, while the Governor’s Call contemplated treatment of those offenses already constitutionally excluded from special juvenile procedures, the Legislature has done the opposite, removing this constitutional protection for all felony crimes,” the suit says.

“They’re circumventing the entire process for constitutional amendments,” Henderson said in the news release. “The same rules they expect us to follow, they’ve ignored. They assume nobody’s paying attention, but we know how these systems work.”

The lawsuit names Secretary of State Nancy Landry as a defendant, but only because Landry, as the state’s election administrator, is responsible for preparing the ballots. The suit does claim that Landry was involved in the allegedly improper passage of the bills that would become the proposed amendments. Landry’s office declined to comment when contacted.

Neither state Sen. Jay Morris – who was the primary author of the bill that became Amendment 1 – nor state Sen. Heather Cloud – who authored the bill that became Amendment 3 – immediately responded to requests for comment.

As of this paper’s presstime, there had been no ruling from the court.

This article originally published in the March 17, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.