Two state senators have filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Board of Ethics seeking to temporarily halt the hiring process of the board’s most prominent employee. 

Their court action comes weeks ahead of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry gaining more influence over the makeup of the board that investigates alleged violations of state campaign finance laws and ethical conflicts of public officials. 

Senate President Pro Tempore Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, and Sen. Stewart Cathey Jr., R-Monroe, have asked the 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rouge Parish to grant a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to keep the ethics board from selecting a new ethics administrator before the end of the year.

The senators want to stall that hiring process until at least January, when the governor and legislative leaders will gain more control of the board.

Ethics board members interviewed four candidates this week to replace current administrator Kathleen Allen and appeared to be on track to hire her successor by the end of December before the lawsuit was filed. 

“No one’s interest will be harmed, and the interests of the Plaintiffs and the public will be greatly enhanced, if the Board of Ethics is enjoined for a short period of time to enable the Board of Ethics, stake holders, and the watchful public to give more deliberate consideration to this important decision,” Gray Sexton, an attorney representing Barrow and Cathey, said in the lawsuit. 

Sexton also served as the state ethics administrator for 46 years prior to starting his law practice. Allen took over from him 15 years ago and announced in September she would be stepping down from the job at the end of the year.

Barrow and Cathey could not be reached immediately for comment Friday morning. At its meeting Friday, the board voted unanimously to go into a private session, which lasted over an hour, to discuss the litigation. 

The lawsuit is just the latest episode in an escalating standoff between the ethics board, Landry and legislators. It comes two days after state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, asked Attorney General Liz Murrill to investigate the board for violating government transparency laws during the ethics administrator hiring process.  

Many of the concerns raised in Barrow and Cathey’s lawsuits are similar to those outlined by Beaullieu in his letter to the attorney general earlier this week.

In the lawsuit, Barrow and Cathey argue the ethics administrator opening should have been advertised for a longer period of time. Applications for the job were only accepted for 10 days, from Oct. 15-25. Two of the four applicants considered qualified for the job already work for the ethics board.

“Arguably, the Board may have met the minimum timeline requirements to advertise the position, but in a manner that did not allow or encourage the involvement of the public,” Sexton wrote in the lawsuit.

“The short duration of the post and the lack of notice hindered the process as reflected in the low number of applicants,” he said. “The Board received only four applicants for this high-level, competitively paid, classified civil service position.”

The lawsuit also alleges the ethics board violated government transparency laws. Sexton said the board did not take a public vote at its September meeting before it went into a private session to discuss “personnel matters,” which could have included the hiring of a new ethics administrator. It also did not explain why it a private session out of the public eye was warranted. 

Sexton also said the ethics board might have held a private meeting to discuss a request from Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, to delay the ethics administrator hiring. If so, that discussion would have violated the state’s open meetings law, which requires government bodies to discuss most matters publicly in the name of transparency, he said. 

Landry, in general, has had a fraught relationship with the ethics board for years. Prior to becoming governor, the board reprimanded him multiple times for violating ethics and campaign finance laws.

In the most high-profile incident, the board charged Landry last year with failing to disclose flights he took to Hawaii on a political donor’s private plane for his job as attorney general. The board and Landry are still in private negotiations over what his penalties for that violation should be.

Legislators have also started criticizing the ethics board over the last month for being “abusive” and aggressive in their investigations of potential law violations. The board has been cracking down on the activities of political action committees run by legislators. 

Shortly after becoming governor, Landry pushed lawmakers to pass the new law that expands the ethics board’s membership from 11 to 15 members in 2025. The law also requires seven of the positions to be filled quickly with appointees from Landry and legislative leaders in January.

Currently, most of the board is made up of people appointed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and Republican state lawmakers who are no longer in office.

Unlike the former governors and legislative leaders, Landry and current lawmakers in charge will also get to pick their appointees to the board directly because of the new law approved this year.

Previous governors and legislators could only pick their ethics board appointees from lists of people recommended by Louisiana’s private college and university leaders. The arrangement, which has been eliminated, was supposed to help insulate the board from political pressure.

This is a developing story and this article may be updated. 

In a special lawmaking session focused on tax policy, Louisiana lawmakers are also quietly moving legislation that could lead to more underage youth being sent to adult prisons.

The Louisiana Senate’s Judiciary C committee voted 4-1 Thursday in favor of a state constitutional amendment to remove limitations on the number of crimes for which youth under the age of 17 could be sentenced as if they are adults. 

Senate Bill 2 would allow legislators to craft new laws that expand the court’s ability to send minors – 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds – to adult prisons. The proposal alarms advocates for children, who believe it further erodes protections for youth.

It also comes on the heels of a new law passed earlier this year that treats all 17-year-olds as adults when it comes to the criminal justice system. The measure took away discretion from district attorneys to put 17-year-olds through the juvenile justice system instead of adult courts. 

In Louisiana, 15- and 16-year-olds, and in more limited circumstances 14-year-olds, can already face adult prison sentences, though only for limited crimes. These include murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, aggravated battery, a second or subsequent burglary of an inhabited dwelling and a second or subsequent violation of some drug crimes.

The constitutional amendment, proposed by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, would strike that specific list from a juvenile justice provision in the constitution. Instead, she wants to insert language allowing a minor to be charged like an adult for “any crime” as long as lawmakers pass new laws to do so. 

Any of those new laws would face a higher threshold for approval than most statutes — a two-thirds majority of both legislative chambers, not just a simple majority — before they could take effect. 

The amendment on its own also faces some hurdles before it can be enacted. Two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives have to vote in favor of it. Voters then have to approve it through a statewide election, which would either be scheduled for late March or November of 2025.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Cloud characterized her amendment as a minor adjustment that is “not going to change the law.” Advocates for children and incarcerated people strongly disagreed with that sentiment. 

“It’s a real profound social failure when we have to give up on kids,” said Michael Cahoon, speaking on behalf of the Promise of Justice Initiative advocacy organization, which opposes the legislation. 

Cloud and Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration, which supports the amendment, were vague Thursday about the new types of crime they might want to use to transfer minors to adult court. 

At the hearing, Cloud initially mentioned concerns that minors couldn’t currently be charged as adults with carjacking but later told her colleagues to avoid focusing on carjacking  as the reason she has filed the legislation. 

Chris Walters, who handles criminal justice policy for the governor, told legislators that the current constitutional restrictions make it difficult to punish teenagers appropriately for drive-by shootings, property damage and assaults that take place at state juvenile justice facilities. 

But Kristen Rome, executive director for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, said district attorneys who want to transfer teenagers to adult courts for the crimes Walters and Cloud listed at the hearing can already do so.

For example, younger teens who carry out carjackings can be charged with armed robbery as if they are adults under the current constitution restrictions, Rome said. Youth who participate in drive-by shootings can already be charged with the adult version of murder or attempted murder, she explained. 

Terry Landry Jr., a lobbyist with the Southern Poverty Law Center, urged legislators to hold off on moving the constitutional change until more was known about the effects of automatically transferring 17-year-olds to the adult criminal system.

Landry Jr., who is not related to the governor, cited a recent article by ProPublica and Verite News that showed nearly 70% of 17-year-olds arrested as if they were adults under the new law in East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and Orleans parishes were accused of nonviolent crimes.

Louisiana sheriffs are already struggling to accommodate 17-year-olds moved from juvenile facilities into the adult system as the result of the law the Legislature approved earlier this year.

While Louisiana state law may consider a 17-year-old an adult for criminal justice purposes, the federal government does not. In order to comply with federal law, sheriffs have to keep anyone under age 18 separate from adult detainees and provide them with educational services.

Sheriffs have complained they don’t have the space in their jails or resources to meet these federal requirements. Many are spending money to house the 17-year-olds at a special facility in Jackson Parish in order not to run afoul of federal or state mandates. 

It’s not clear how local law enforcement feels about Cloud’s proposal.

In an usual move, the Louisiana District Attorneys Association and Louisiana Sheriffs Association did not testify or attend Wednesday’s hearing on Cloud’s bill. As two of the more powerful lobbying groups at the Capitol, they typically weigh in on most criminal justice proposals that directly affect their respective memberships.

Despite its uncertainty, Cloud’s bill gained approval from the Senate committee that Republicans dominate. Democrats make up about a third of the Louisiana Senate but account for only one of the seven senators on the Judiciary C committee. 

Sen. Regina Barrow, of Baton Rouge, is the committee’s only Democrat and was the lone no vote against Cloud’s legislation. She expressed concern over the “law and order” approach to disciplining youth.

“I do not believe kids are born bad. I just don’t,” she said.