Louisiana voters will decide whether state lawmakers should have the power to set up new state-level specialty courts, like a business court. (Getty Images)
Louisiana voters will decide whether to empower state lawmakers to establish new state-run specialty courts, such as a statewide business court, that operate alongside the traditional judiciary.
The Louisiana Legislature on Friday voted 73-25 in the House of Representatives and 29-6 in the Senate in favor of a constitutional amendment giving legislators more power to reshape Louisiana’s court system.
The measure will appear before voters on a March 29 ballot that will also feature an overhaul of Louisiana’s tax and financial operations and a proposal to make it easier to send more minors to adult prisons.
Currently, lawmakers can only establish trial courts of “limited jurisdiction” within the boundaries of an existing state judicial district. For example, they can set up specialty courts that focus on drug users, veterans and people with mental health challenges.
The constitutional amendment, if passed, would newly allow state lawmakers to create regional or statewide courts with a two-thirds vote of each chamber of the Legislature.
The sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, said he brought the bill primarily to set up a specialty business court.
Complex business matters should be handled by judges with a certain level of expertise in those subjects, he said. A statewide business court would also allow the corporate community to resolve their disputes faster because they would no longer have to compete with divorces and other civil matters for district judges’ time.
Other supporters of the amendment said it would also allow regional specialty courts focused on drug abusers, veterans and mental health issues to be established in rural areas.
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These types of specialty courts already exist in many urban and suburban court systems. But many of the smaller judicial district courts in the state don’t have the resources to create them under the current system, said Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, last week.
Still, Morris and the legislation’s other sponsor, Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, have been vague about how a business court or other new regional courts might operate. The details of how the news courts would function would have to be outlined in legislation that hasn’t been drafted yet, they said.
“To be determined in a future bill,” McMakin replied when asked by his House colleagues Friday about how the new courts might work.
Critics of the amendment said it could allow the big business community to work around locally elected judges who aren’t sympathetic to the corporate community’s arguments.
For example, if a statewide business court was established, lawsuits such as those brought by local parishes against oil and gas interests could end up in a statewide business court controlled by judges who don’t live where the coastal damage took place, said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans.
Other lawsuits over environmental pollution caused by industrial users could also end up in a statewide court where the judges aren’t elected by the residents most affected by the damage, she said.
“I really question who is behind this. It really seems that the business community wants this to circumvent local courts,” Landry said during the House floor debate on the bill.
There are also concerns that the proposal would allow the legislators to create new, state-controlled criminal courts in Louisiana’s left-leaning cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport. Conservative officials in Mississippi have already done something similar in their state capital of Jackson.
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In Jackson, a majority-Black city, Mississippi state lawmakers established a Capitol Complex Improvement District Court where the prosecutor and judge are picked by white, conservative elected officials. The judge over the new court is appointed, even though Mississippi residents typically get to elect judges.
“I’m pretty sure this is designed to do the same in [Louisiana’s] three major cities,” Landry said Friday.
Outside of the statewide court proposal, the constitutional amendment would also allow the Louisiana Supreme Court to reprimand out-of-state attorneys for unethical behavior while working in the state. Under the current law, justices only have the power to discipline lawyers who are members of the Louisiana bar.
The impetus behind broadening the supreme court’s disciplinary authority is to prevent fraud like that allegedly committed by MMA Law Firm in Houston. The firm is accused of misrepresenting their services and mishandling thousands of Louisiana residents’ insurance claims after hurricanes Laura, Delta and Ida in 2020 and 2021.