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Bills targeting Louisiana’s public records law draw criticism

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Bills targeting Louisiana’s public records law draw criticism


NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Like the federal government, Louisiana allows the public to request and gain access to certain government records. But bills in the state legislature would water down Louisiana’s public records law, drawing condemnation from people who favor transparency.

A portion of Senate Bill 482, by Sen. Heather Cloud (R-Turkey Creek), would block access to any records “reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations,” that are part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are made.

“We find that very problematic,” said attorney Melia Cerrato, a Sunshine Legal Fellow at Tulane’s First Amendment Law Clinic.

Cerrato says reducing access to public records undermines public trust.

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“Limiting public records like this lets the government operate in secret. And it erodes that public trust,” she said. “This bill creates a huge carve-out to our state public records law.

“This bill would essentially exempt all government records at all levels of government — from your city, your town, your parish to your state. So, this isn’t just to the governor. This is for every elected official and public agency that we have elected and our taxpayers fund.”

Dillard University political analyst Dr. Robert Collins said he thinks such a law, if passed, would prompt lawsuits.

“It’s bad from a public policy standpoint and a transparency standpoint,” Collins said. “And also, this law would — if passed — almost certainly automatically be challenged on First Amendment grounds.”

Another piece of legislation — HB 461 by Rep. Steven Jackson (D-Shreveport) — recently won approval in the House. It would allow confidentiality of certain information related to active economic development negotiations involving local governments.

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“This will add local and parish governments to that statute,” Jackson said. “This is an already existing statute. LED (local economic development) already is exempt under this statute, as well as ports,” Jackson said just before the House voted.

But Jackson’s legislation faced opposition in the House Governmental Affairs Committee from an attorney representing the Louisiana Press Association.

“The local governments, they’re not the economic development districts,” attorney Scott Sternberg told the committee. “They’re not the ports and it’s not LED. They are the folks that are signing the bus contracts and making sure that people have appropriate housing and things of that nature. And those are the kind of records that people should be able to check up on their government for.”

Cerrato says that bill would deprive the public of valuable information.

“This bill definitely shrouds local governments in secrecy, and not only hides records of how public funds and how public lands are potentially used, but more broadly, it’s how public business is being conducted,” she said.

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SB 423 by Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe) would allow only Louisiana citizens to request public records. And SB 502 by Sen. Blake Miguez (R-New Iberia) would require people who want to inspect, copy or reproduce public records to provide “sufficient” information to verify their age and identification.

Collins said he believes that, collectively, the bills are intended to target news media. But he said, “I’m guessing anybody — not just in the media, but anybody that cares about transparency and the First Amendment — is going to be opposed to these laws.”

Cerrato said limiting access to public records to Louisiana citizens will hurt students attending Louisiana colleges and universities who come from outside the state or country.

“We have a case in which a father of a man was murdered in Louisiana, and he sought access to those public records about the death of his son,” she said. “Under these two bills, that man — who is a Missouri resident just looking for answers about (the) handling of his child’s death — this bill would tell that grieving father he has no right to see those investigative records.”

Fox 8 requested comment from the governor and the lawmakers sponsoring the four bills, but did not receive responses.

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Louisiana

How to watch Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati in Starkville Regional

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How to watch Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati in Starkville Regional


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For the second day in a row, Louisiana baseball has its back against the wall in the NCAA Tournament Starkville Regional.

The No. 25 Ragin’ Cajuns (40-24) secured their 40th win of the season and kept their postseason dreams alive by beating Lipscomb 10-4 in an elimination game on Saturday, May 30. Now, the pressure is back on for seventh-year coach Matt Deggs and his squad as they face No. 24 Cincinnati (38-21) in another win-or-go-home matchup on Sunday, May 31 in Starkville, Mississippi.

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Against the Bisons, UL used four pitchers, and in total has used seven of its arms so far in tournament play. One of the Cajuns’ fresh arms heading into the matchup against the Bearcats is senior Andrew Herrmann. The lefty made his latest appearance during the Cajuns’ Sun Belt Conference tournament run on May 24.

While the Cajuns come into the match with some momentum, Cincinnati enters the match with a chip on its shoulder after losing its first game of the tournament on Saturday against regional host Mississippi State.

Watch Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati on ESPN+

What channel is Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati on?

TV: None

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Livestream: ESPN+

Radio: Varsity Network, 96.5 FM

Louisiana vs. Cincinnati will be available live on ESPN+ streaming for the first game of Day 3 of the Starkville Regional. Jack Kizer and Jack DeLongchamps will provide commentary from Dudy Noble Field.

What time does Louisiana baseball play Cincinnati?

Date: Sunday, May 31

Time: 2 p.m. CT

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Location: Dude Noble Field, Starkville, Mississippi

The Louisiana vs. Cincinnati game starts at 2 p.m. Sunday at Dudy Noble Field in Starkville, Mississippi.

Starkville Regionals schedule

Friday, May 29

  • Game 1: Mississippi State 10, Lipscomb 1
  • Game 2: Cincinnati 12, Louisiana 2

Saturday, May 30

  • Game 3: Lipscomb 4, Louisiana, 10
  • Game 4: Mississippi State vs Cincinnati, 8 p.m. CT

Sunday, May 31

  • Game 5: Louisiana vs Cincinnati, 2 p.m. CT
  • Game 6: Winner G5 vs Mississippi State, 7 p.m. CT

Monday, June 1

  • Game 7: If necessary, TBD

Shannon Belt covers high school sports and the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow her high school and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ShannonBelt3. Got questions regarding HS/UL athletics? Send them to Shannon Belt at sbelt@gannett.com.



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Louisiana Gov. signs Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act

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Louisiana Gov. signs Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act


BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — The Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act has been signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry.

This comes after HB 636, authored by Rep. Vanessa LaFleur (D-Baton Rouge), was signed by the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate on May 19.

The measure redefines hazing, mandates annual prevention training, and strengthens penalties for student organizations involved in hazing.

The legislation is named after a Southern University student who was killed in 2025 after being punched in the chest with boxing gloves during an unsanctioned, off-campus fraternity hazing ritual.

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The law will go into effect on August 1.

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As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide – Inside Climate News

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As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide – Inside Climate News


The shoreline of Louisiana has never been still or fixed, though recent generations have treated it as such.

Since the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago, around when people arrived in what is now the United States, sea levels have repeatedly reshaped aspects of the Gulf Coast. But today, human-caused warming is accelerating that ancient process, pushing Louisiana’s dynamic shoreline into conflict with cities, roads, ports and levees built to contain and stabilize nature.

A new study in Nature Sustainability argues that this history is a guide to what comes next. Coastal Louisiana, the authors write, is ground zero for coastal climate adaptation: a place where rising seas and sinking land are already reshaping where people live, and where planning for movement could offer more agency than crisis-driven displacement.

“We have got to remember that when people first came to North America 20,000 years ago, there had already been a lot of climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, a co-author of the paper and professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University. “There’s been a lot of sea level rise in the region, and Indigenous populations have always moved with that shoreline.”

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In geologic time, he added, “New Orleans has been there for just a blip. We’ve got to get it out of our heads that this is terra firma.”

The physical stakes are still stark. Southern Louisiana is facing a convergence of rising seas, wetland erosion, stronger storms and land subsidence, much of it worsened by decades of oil and gas canals cut through the coast. The state contains what theIPCC has identified as the world’s most exposed coastal zone, where the shoreline is projected to move more than 30 miles inland of New Orleans.

By comparing today’s warming trajectory with the last interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were similar and seas were much higher, the new study estimates that the region could eventually face three to seven meters of sea-level rise and lose as much as three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands.

Keenan emphasizes that the point is not to forecast a sudden disappearance, but to widen the planning lens: if the coast is already moving, Louisiana has a chance to decide how people, infrastructure and economies move with it.

The danger is assuming everyone has the same ability to act on that choice. Social mobility, he said, depends on financial mobility— which means adaptation cannot simply tell people to move to safer ground. It has to move opportunity, too: jobs, industries, schools and affordable housing beyond the form of voluntary buyouts, a common managed-retreat tool in which governments purchase flood-prone homes and return the land to open space.

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“Outmigration is often framed as tragedy or failure, but in some cases it signals agency,” said Brianna Castro, a co-author of the paper, who highlights that this is a chance to plan around choices people are already making. 

Nearly all of Louisiana’s coastal zone has lost residents since 2000, and since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, about a quarter of Orleans Parish’s population has left the area, while more than half of rural Cameron Parish has relocated. 

“If you build jobs and you build homes, specifically affordable homes, [on] safer ground, people will come,” said Castro, who is a professor of urban sustainability at Yale University’s School of the Environment.

The opportunity, she argues, is to make those moves possible before crisis forces them on harsher terms—with schools, housing and work in places where communities can carry culture forward rather than be scattered by disaster. New Orleans at its core, she said, is not confined to its current footprint.

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“We’re not going to ‘lose’ New Orleans,” she said. “New Orleans has an incredibly rich local culture, and that will carry across the lake.” What must change, she argued, is the assumption that a moving coast can be met with immovable systems.
That idea resonates beyond Louisiana. Vivek Shandas, a professor of earth, environment and society at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, said the paper widens the frame from emergency response to long-term adaptation.

“We’ve been resettling for hundreds of thousands of years as a species,” Shandas said. “I think we’ve gotten really complacent with thinking that once we’ve set up a place and invested in it that it has to be like that forever. But the Earth is a very dynamic and incredibly fluid system.”

For that reason, he said, Louisiana is a “bellwether” for the rest of the country—a place where planners, policymakers and communities can study what adaptation strategies work before the same pressures intensify elsewhere.

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“It’s super important for people to recognize that what we’re ultimately calling for in this paper is a public, private, and civic engagement with adaptation policy, planning and practice,” said Keenan. 

The study points to immediate action projects, including reviving the canceled Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion—a $3-billion coastal restoration project designed to reconnect the Mississippi River with the Barataria Basin, the rapidly disappearing wetland area on the west bank of the river south of New Orleans—and advancing the Breton diversion on the other side of the Mississippi River. 

Unlike dredging, which moves sediment once and deposits it in place, river diversions are designed to restore a more continuous flow of sediment into wetlands, mimicking the processes that built the delta over thousands of years. Dredged material can create land, Keenan said, but it does not sustain the same root systems and ecological processes as a living riverine system.

“We’ve got a big challenge here, but this isn’t about the challenge. This is about the opportunity,” he said. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. There is so much economic opportunity to engage with people and to build things. Data centers won’t give people more jobs, but adapting to climate change just might.” 

About This Story

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.

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