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.

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.

The majority opinion of the court did not address the arguments over whether Chambers’ residency was relevant to her candidacy.