Louisiana attorneys who run public defender offices have accused a state official of violating their free speech rights. (Getty Images)
Five local public defenders say the state official who oversees their offices violated their right to free speech when he fired them from their positions. They are asking the Louisiana’s State Public Defender Oversight Board to intervene in the coming layoffs.
“I believe my pending termination is an act of retaliation against me for the exercise of my 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech,” Brett Brunson, who has run the Nachitoches Parish public defender’s office since 2007, wrote Wednesday in a letter to the oversight board.
Rémy Starns, who has been state public defender since 2020, sent notices to the five local public defender chiefs at the end of February informing them their employment contracts would not be renewed in July.
Starns and the district’s chief public defenders have had several standoffs in the past two years over their compensation. The attorneys have fought off Starns’ plans to cut their pay and to pressure them into opening private law practices alongside running their local public defender offices.
Louisiana’s 37 chief public defenders hire and manage lawyers who represent criminal defendants who cannot afford their own attorneys.
More than a dozen of the chiefs testified in opposition to Starns’ plans for public defense during state legislative hearings and public defender board meetings over the past year. The five who stand to lose their jobs have been among the most vocal about their objections.
They include Brunson, Michelle AndrePont in Caddo Parish, Deirdre Fuller in Rapides Parish, Trisha Ward of Evangeline Parish and John Hogue, who works in Tensas, Madison and East Carroll parishes.
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Fuller is the president and AndrePont the secretary of the Public Defender Association of Louisiana, which represents hundreds of attorneys who provide criminal public defense.
The five district defenders say their firings are in retaliation for speaking against Starns’ proposals publicly. They are asking the oversight board to grant them each a hearing and investigation into their removal.
“Since no cause is stated for my termination, and none exists, I contend this action by the State Public Defender was not taken in good faith and was without just cause,” Ward wrote in her letter sent Thursday.
Starnes declined to comment on why he was letting the district defenders go when approached by a reporter after a legislative hearing Monday. He could not be reached by phone Thursday for comment about the challenge to the terminations.
But the chief public defenders have fewer options for fighting off the terminations than they did just a year ago. With the backing of Gov. Jeff Landry, Starns passed a new law in 2024 that weakened the state public defender board and strengthened his own power over chief public defender contracts.
Starns had been in a dispute with the previous state public defender board over chief public defender salaries a few months before the law was approved to dissolve it. The defunct board’s members overruled him in 2023 and put in place a standardized compensation plan for chief public defenders that gave Starns less control over their pay.
Though not as powerful, the new public defender oversight board has also backed the standardized compensation plan created by the old board over Starns’ objections.
Last year, the new board, made up mostly of Landry appointees, voted twice to keep chief public defender pay level even after Starns had suggested it should be reworked. He wanted to cut some chiefs’ salaries and raise others.
After the oversight board voted against his pay proposal for a second time, Starns told its members he didn’t think they had the authority to block him from putting it into effect.
This week, Starns suggested the oversight board be dissolved. In a presentation to state lawmakers on budget issues, his office recommended replacing all references to the oversight board in state law with “Office of the State Public Defender,” which would effectively transfer the board’s remaining power to his position.
Public defenders represent nearly every criminal defendant in Louisiana. In fiscal year 2022-23, 88% of people charged with crimes relied on a public defender, according to a state public defender financial report. Collectively, they had approximately 142,000 clients that year.
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