NEW ORLEANS (AP) - It appears lawmakers will have to wait a bit longer before they will get any clarity on whether Louisiana has too many district and city court judges.
A committee of lawmakers, lawyers, judges and private citizens, after three years of studying where to cut or at least how to shuffle existing judgeships, concluded more study is needed.
The Times-Picayune reports (https://bit.ly/1gc8ZnP ) the study’s ambiguity could jeopardize any chance that judgeships would be eliminated or transferred to underserved jurisdictions before this fall’s statewide elections, when 80 percent of the state’s bench seats will be on the ballot.
“A time study is needed to help determine the appropriate number of trial court judgeships needed in the state,” the report states.
Rather than suggesting that the judicial branch shrink, the committee’s report found that the state’s five appellate courts possibly could use more judges and that many courts that participated in the study asked for more money and more staff to handle their caseloads.
The issue of culling the state’s judiciary was first raised after Hurricane Katrina. The state Senate requested in 2007 that the Supreme Court’s Judicial Council release annual reports on the state of the judiciary. Those studies stopped in 2012, a year after the Legislature established the HCR 143 Committee, named after the House resolution that created it to examine the state’s judicial branch.
The Bureau of Governmental Research, a government watchdog organization, has said that if the court recommends further study, it will stall the elimination of unneeded judgeships for years.
The state constitution prohibits the shortening of a sitting judge’s term, and the next judicial election is in November. BGR says 80 percent of parish judgeships will be on the ballot. If lawmakers don’t vote on changes before then, judges will be starting new six-year terms under the existing structure.
Lawmakers asked for the judgeship review in 2011 to address population shifts, particularly since Hurricane Katrina, and to consider the changing caseloads in districts.
Lawmakers sought information on the state’s three parish courts and five appellate court circuits by February 2012 and a report on the state’s 97 city and district courts to be finished by Feb. 15. The committee met the first deadline, but missed the second. It explained at the time that the formula for determining the workloads for courts of appeals was outdated and needed to be revised. It reported those findings Friday.
The BGR, which has filed a lawsuit alleging the judgeship review has violated state open meetings laws, said that based on the Supreme Court’s workload formula, the state has too many judges. In New Orleans, the organization says the parish’s seven courts have 45 judges but only need 20.
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Information from: The Times-Picayune, https://www.nola.com
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