Louisiana
Domestic violence shelter funding cut in Gov. Jeff Landry’s budget plan – Louisiana Illuminator
Gov. Jeff Landry’s proposed state budget slashes funding for domestic violence victims by millions of dollars starting July 1, even as the governor says crime victims and public safety are his top priority.
State and federal funding for domestic violence shelters could go from $14.6 million in the current fiscal year to just $6.2 million in the next cycle, according to advocates for domestic violence victims. It would be the lowest level of funding for the shelters since Gov. Bobby Jindal was in office 10 years ago.
If the cut goes through, the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence will have to pull back on plans to add more shelter beds across the state. It would put the brakes on opening up five new shelters and expanding six of 16 existing facilities, executive director Mariah Stidham Wineski said.
“The new shelters that are opening will shut down,” Wineski said.
Domestic violence is one of the largest public safety issues facing Louisiana. In 2020, the state had the fifth highest female homicide rate in the country. More than half of women victims that year were killed by an intimate partner, according to the Violence Policy Center.
It’s unclear what led the Landry administration to propose a cut to funding for domestic violence shelters. The governor’s office has not responded to a question about why the money was removed. A spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services, where much of the funding is housed, declined to comment.
Most of the cut, $7 million, came from the removal of state money the Louisiana Senate added for shelters in 2023. Wineski and other advocates said lawmakers told them the funding increase would be ongoing and baked into the family welfare budget for years to come.
But when Landry took office in January, he stripped down the state spending plan in preparation for a significant financial downturn next year. He took out money for dozens of programs legislators added in 2023, including for domestic violence shelters, higher education and economic development.
Landry and lawmakers will face annual budget shortfalls of over half a billion dollars after a 0.45% state sales expires in 2025. The governor said he wants to start limiting state spending this year to make it easier to deal with smaller, leaner budgets in the future.
Yet Landry isn’t sparing any expense when it comes to other public safety measures he is personally pushing.
State lawmakers are swiftly moving a package of Landry’s bills through a special session on crime. They are expected to add millions of dollars in prison expenses each year by lengthening the time incarcerated people stay behind bars.
At the same time, domestic violence shelters face reductions in funding, the governor has asked lawmakers to approve approximately $10 million more for a new state police troop for New Orleans and $3 million to send Louisiana National Guard members to the Texas border with Mexico over the next four months.
Landry said he is pushing these changes to benefit crime victims, but advocates for domestic violence shelters wonder why then their organizations haven’t been made a budget priority alongside state police and prisons.
“Every single person we are serving is a victim of crime,” said Julie Pellegrin, executive director of The Haven, a domestic violence shelter that serves Terrebonne, Lafourche and Assumption parishes.
A 2021 investigation by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor concluded the state desperately needed more shelter beds for domestic violence victims. Louisiana’s 16 shelters had a total of 389 spaces, while Louisiana had an average of 2,700 unmet requests for shelter beds every year.
The audit noted no domestic violence shelter exists in central Louisiana, even though Rapides Parish had the 10th highest number of protective orders issued in the state in 2020.
Wineski has been able to open a shelter in Iberia Parish after receiving a small boost in federal funding from the state a few years ago. The funding increase last year was expected to take shelter bed capacity around the state from around 390 to at least 600 slots, she said.
New facilities had been planned or recently opened in Livingston, Lafourche, St. Tammany, Caddo and Avoyelles parishes. The Avoyelles location would have helped fill the shelter gap in central Louisiana.
“Domestic violence shelters do keep people alive,” Wineski said.
At The Haven in Houma, Pellegrin used the extra state money to open up shelter beds and provide outreach services to remote portions of Assumption, Lafourche and Terrebonne.
A parent can be reluctant to leave an abusive relationship if it means they have to cross parish lines and send their children to a different school, she said. By having more locations, her organization can reach more people.
This year’s funding increase is the first hike in state support The Haven had seen in more tha 10 years, Pellegrin said. If Landry cuts that funding in the next cycle, she’ll have to close some of the satellite locations she only recently opened.
The Haven’s emergency shelter operates at near total capacity yearound already.
“When you make that phone call [to get help from a domestic shelter], you may have to wait,” she said.
In the Baton Rouge region, Iris Domestic Violence Center was using the money this year to expand its shelter capacity and provide children’s programming.
Construction is already underway on playrooms, study areas and a teen library at Iris. Executive director Patti Joy Freeman also hopes to add a music room to the facility with donated instruments for children.
Freeman said programs for children and teens are as important as what is offered to the adult victims. Teenagers in abusive families often take on a lot of responsibility helping raise younger children and need space of their own.
All children also need counseling and programming to ensure the familial cycle of violence is broken, according to Freeman. Those types of resources are crime prevention tools because they help keep domestic violence at bay.
But Freeman won’t have the resources to open the new children programs at Iris if state funding for domestic violence shelters gets cut next year. She won’t be able to afford the extra staff and utilities needed to run the program.
“I have to be a good steward with our money,” she said.
Before coming to Iris, Freeman oversaw domestic violence investigations for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office. A former law enforcement officer, she considers shelters and their programs to be essential to fighting crime. Some victims feel comfortable coming to a shelter for help long before they are willing to interact with police, she said.
“Why are we wondering why these statistics don’t go down when we only have 16 shelters with wraparound services?” she said.
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Police say a man shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, following a domestic dispute in Shreveport.
The incident took place early Sunday morning, April 19, on West 79th Street in the Cedar Grove neighborhood. According to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office, the victims included three boys and five girls, aged between three and 11-years-old. Seven of the children were siblings, while one was a cousin. Two adult females were also injured, including one who was shot at a home located in the 500 block of Harrison Street.
One of the adults was inside the home on West 79th Street when the children were killed. She managed to escape through a window with two of the children and reached the roof. The woman jumped down with one of the children. Unfortunately, the other child did not manage to escape. Police later found his body on the roof with a gunshot wound. The surviving child was taken to the hospital with a broken leg.
The children were identified by their mothers as Jayla (age 3), Shayla (age 5), Kayla (age 6), Layla (age 7), Markaydon (age 10), Sariahh (age 11), Khedarrion (age 6), and Braylon (age 5).
Authorities say the suspect and father of the victims, Shamar Elkins, was the only person who fired shots that led to the juveniles’ deaths.
Authorities noted that Elkins stole a vehicle near West 79th Street after he shot the victims. He was pursued by patrol officers into Bossier Parish, where they discharged their weapons and fatally shot him on Brompton Lane. Louisiana State Police will take over the investigation involving the officers.
Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux expressed his thoughts on the matter, saying, “We have a hurting community. We have hurting families. We have hurting police officers, coroner’s personnel, fire department, sheriff people, and this affects the entire community. We all mourn with these families. I ask, it’s a Sunday morning. I ask all of you who are, who are listening, who might be able to. Pray at your services this morning for not just this family, for all the victims, for the victims who are at the hospital, and for the Cedar Grove community and for the community at large.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill also commented on the tragic shooting, stating, “Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating this tragic situation. We do not yet know all the details, but I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. I’m praying for the victims and their family members in the wake of this devastating violence.”
According to the Director of Strategy and Communications, Mary Nash-Wood, two of the children attended Summer Grove, and at least four attended Linwood Charter School.
The police have not determined a motive. More updates will be provided as the information becomes available.
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