BATON ROUGE — Three Baton Rouge district judges have sued the State of Louisiana in federal court over a 2025 judicial redistricting law.
Plaintiffs Donald Johnson, Ronald Johnson and Gail Horne Ray filed their lawsuit February 27 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. Donald Johnson serves as the chief judge of the 19th Judicial District Court; the other two also are judges on the 19th JDC.
The named defendants are Gov. Jeff Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill and Secretary of State Nancy Landry.
According to their complaint for declaratory relief, at issue is Act 243. Approved by the state legislature and eventually signed into law last year, it redistricts the 19th JDC’s election sections, known as judicial subdistricts.
However, the 19th JDC is one of 11 “Clark-affected” judicial districts governed by the federal court’s previous rulings and consent decree, the judges claim. “Clark” refers to Clark v. Roemer, initially titled Clark v. Edwards and now captioned Clark v. Landry. The case claimed Black voters lost voting power under a previous system used to establish voting districts.
“Clark’s decretal rulings, the 1992 Consent Decree, and Louisiana Act 145 of 1994 function iteratively as interlocking enforcement juridical acts,” the 11-page complaint states.
“These mandates required multiple state courts to replace at-large judicial election districts with specialized ‘subdistricts’ – statutorily defined in Louisiana law as ‘election sections’ – to ensure minority representation across eleven ‘affected jurisdictions’ identified in Clark’s remedy as ‘guilty’ districts.”
According to the lawsuit, the long-running Clark litigation resulted in a court order and consent decree. The Clark consent decree, the judges argue, is part judgment, part contract, and part injunction.
“Clark’s Consent Decree commenced implementation of the Court-ordered remedial election subdistricts as a binding performance plan for future elections for the 19th Judicial District Court, amongst ten other ‘affected’ court jurisdictions, and added other jurisdictions with subdistrict and specific judgeship assignments,” the complaint states.
Since the 1992 judgment and consent decree, Louisiana officials and the legislature have been barred from enforcing redistricting plans that contradict Clark’s mandates and subdistrict orders, the judges note.
The judges argue that Louisiana legislators and the defendants lack the lawful authority to alter the court-ordered subdistricts “without specific judicial process and approval.”
“The Court established Clark’s subdistricts to protect the Plaintiffs’ rights to vote and to run for office as Black voters and as qualified attorneys, respectively, within divisions of court of the 19th JDC, District 2 of the First Circuit, and the Family Court of East Baton Rouge Parish,” their complaint states.
“State lawmakers and Defendants lack lawful and jurisdictional authority outside of the federal civil legal process and procedural code to prejudice Plaintiffs’ interests in their divisions of the 19th JDC, and to affect adversely Plaintiffs’ substantive subdistrict remedial judgment against the State of Louisiana secured in Clark and in the Consent Decree.”
However, the judges contend that in 2025, without seeking any modification of the judgment and consent decree in Clark, Louisiana’s lawmakers enacted Act 243.
“Enactment of Act 243 by Louisiana lawmakers, and its enforcement by the Defendants, materially altered the decretal outcomes of Clark’s judgments and the resulting subdistrict remedies, to the prejudice of Plaintiffs’ Clark-vested rights and their federally protected civil and voting rights and obligations,” their complaint states.
The judges argue state officials have a “constitutional duty” to act before implementing – and to use the Federal Rules of the Code of Civil Procedure when seeking to modify the court’s judgment and/or consent decree – not after the fact.
“Rather than adhering to the mandatory requirements of securing judicial permission to reopen Clark’s remedy, the Defendants made a conscious choice to ignore their obligations to the Plaintiffs ‘to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding,’” their filing states.
“By abandoning essential procedural and substantive safeguards, they intentionally undermined federal law and jurisprudence and deprived the Plaintiffs of the due process of law.”
The judges seek a judgment declaring that Act 243 is not enforceable “unless and until” changes in subdistricts created are approved by the court in Clark.
Baton Rouge law firms Steve Irving LLC and Maley Law Firm are representing the judges in the action.
