Louisiana
Appellate court removes one Louisiana Supreme Court candidate from District 2 race • Louisiana Illuminator
A state appellate court decided Thursday to remove one of three candidates for a new majority-Black Louisiana Supreme Court seat from the election for failing to file her 2022 tax return. The candidate Leslie Chambers will ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider the ruling.
“Mrs. Chambers will most certainly be making an appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court via the filing of an application for writ within the time prescribed,” Chambers campaign manager Jason Redmond said in a written statement.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided on a 9-3 vote to kick Chambers off the Nov. 5 ballot for Supreme Court District 2, an open seat that represents an area from Baton Rouge to Monroe.
In the same opinion, the court affirmed another candidate, Judge Marcus Hunter, could stay in the race, even though Chambers and Hunter have had similar tax problems.
If the ruling stands, Hunter and a third candidate, Judge John Michael Guidry, would go head to head in the fall election for the second ever majority-Black district on Louisiana’s highest state court. All the candidates running for the office, including Chambers, are Black Democrats.
Chambers is chief of staff for the Louisiana Housing Corp. Hunter serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and Guidry is the chief judge for the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Fourth Circuit’s decision to disqualify Chambers from the election came in response to a lawsuit Baton Rouge voter Elisa Knowles Collins filed. It sought to remove Chambers and Hunter from the race, but not Guidry.
Collins testified last week that she has a personal connection to Guidry. Her daughter works for him as an attorney.
In her lawsuit, Collins alleged that Chambers and Hunter did not meet the qualifications to run for the Louisiana Supreme Court because they had not filed their annual income tax returns for the past five years as is required of candidates.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleged Chambers had not filed her state tax return in 2022, and Hunter did not file his state tax returns for 2021, 2022 and 2023 and his federal taxes in 2022.
Chambers and Hunter have insisted they made a good faith effort to file their late tax returns before they signed up to run for office July 17.
Chambers testified that she tried to submit her 2022 return online in June through TurboTax and was told she was owed a refund of over $4,500 for that cycle. Hunter’s certified public accountant, Rosie Harper, testified that all his overdue tax filings had been submitted July 16, the day before he registered to run in the Supreme Court race, though Harper said she later found out some of Hunter’s filings had bounced back.
The court ultimately allowed Hunter to remain a candidate because his tax preparer sent Hunter a letter before he entered the race indicating his taxes were settled. Chambers had no such letter from TurboTax.
“During trial, multiple text messages and letters between Judge Hunter and Ms. Harper were introduced that showed that Judge Hunter relied on Ms. Harper to file his federal and state tax returns,” 4th Circuit Judge Rachael Johnson wrote in the majority opinion.
“Ms. Chambers did not provide any other documents showing that she transmitted her 2022 Louisiana state tax return,” Johnson said.
The three judges who dissented from the majority opinion all took issue with Chambers and Hunter’s tax situations being treated differently.
Judges Sandra Cabrina Jenkins and Joy Cossich Lobrano believe Hunter should have been ejected from the race along with Chambers. They concluded the law requires some proof that tax filings were accepted.
“Judge Hunter cannot prove that transmission was successful because he presented no evidence that (the Louisiana Department of Revenue) received the filing,” Jenkins wrote in the dissent.
Judge Roland Belsome went in the other direction, saying that Chambers should be kept in the race if Hunter was allowed to stay a candidate.
“It is worth mentioning that TurboTax calculated that Ms. Chambers was due a refund of nearly $4,600 from [the state] based on the information she supplied,” he wrote in his dissent. “Her demonstrated consistency in filing procedure coupled with the natural human instinct to recover money owed make Ms. Chambers testimony more than mere self-serving testimony.”
“The principles and rationale by which the majority found Mr. Hunter’s certification of tax filing to be acceptable must lead to the same conclusion regarding Ms. Chambers,” Belsome wrote.
Belsome also indicated he was uncomfortable with disqualifying candidates for failing to file taxes in general.
“If that candidate has failed to file tax returns or owes money to the Board of Ethics, that should be fodder for the campaign trail in a democratic process,” he added.
The Collins lawsuit also sought to disqualify Chambers as a candidate because she doesn’t live within the state Supreme Court district where she is running. Candidates for state offices are typically required to live inside the district for at least a year before they can sign up for an election.
But attorneys for Chambers argued her residency wasn’t at issue because the new state Supreme Court district map had only been in place for less than three months before candidates signed up for the race. Before May, District 2 covered northwest Louisiana and none of the candidates lived in it under the old map. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
The majority opinion of the court did not address the arguments over whether Chambers’ residency was relevant to her candidacy.
Louisiana
Mom whose 3 children were killed in Louisiana mass shooting still has bullet lodged in face — and sometimes thinks kids are alive
The mother of three of the eight children massacred by deranged Army veteran dad Shamar Elkins in Louisiana still has a bullet lodged in her head and is struggling with her memory — sometimes believing her kids are still alive, according to a relative.
Christina Snow, the girlfriend of 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, was shot in the face early Sunday when the former National Guardsman went on a shooting rampage at two nearby homes in Shreveport.
Three of Snow’s children she shared with Elkins — Braylon Snow, 5, Khedarrion Snow, 6, and Sariahh Snow, 11 — were killed in their home.
Elkins fired a bullet through Snow’s nose which is lodged in her head, and doctors aren’t ready to risk surgery, according to her cousin Jamarckus Snow.
The mom is now dealing with heartbreaking memory loss about the fate of her kids.
“One day, she’ll remember they’re dead. I heard yesterday she woke up and was like, ‘I got to get my kids ready for school.’ She’ll lose memory of what happened,” he told NBC News.
“One day, she’ll know, and the next day, she’s thinking her kids is still there.”
Follow the latest updates on the Louisiana father who killed 8 children in Shreveport shooting:
Elkins fatally shot his seven children — the three he shared with Snow and his four daughters with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh: Jayla Elkins, 3, Shayla Elkins, 5, Kayla Pugh, 6, and Layla Pugh, 7.
He also killed Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10, the son of his wife’s sister, who was staying at their house.
The vet turned his gun on Pugh and Snow, too, severely wounding both women, who are still in the hospital.
Elkins shot himself in the driveway of his former military mentor as law enforcement closed in.
The motive for the shooting remains unclear, but Elkins was suffering from mental health issues and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday after Pugh asked him for a divorce.
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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