The fall races for district judgeships in East Baton Rouge Parish will be unusual, with many sitting judges aging off their benches, new subdistricts created and the first seat to be elected by the entire parish in more than 30 years.
Even the ballot for the Nov. 3 election will look different, with up to eight judicial seats being decided rather than five from previous years.
This year’s election changes are due to a new law, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Freiberg, R-Baton Rouge, and passed by the Legislature last year.
The law drew new subdistricts for the 19th Judicial District, resetting which portions of the parish vote in each judge’s race.
The previous map, drawn more than 30 years ago as part of a legal settlement meant to protect Black voting rights, had three subdistricts, each of which selected five of the court's 15 judges.
Freiberg's new map, which she argued brings the subdistricts more in line with East Baton Rouge Parish's racial population distribution, has two subdistricts, each of which chooses seven of the court's 15 judges. The final seat will be elected at-large across the entire parish.
That means voters will receive a specific ballot based on whether they live in the northwestern or southeastern subdistrict. That ballot will have up to seven races to vote on from that subdistrict, as well as the one at-large race. Uncontested races won't appear.
Each race will be for a specific seat, or division, at the courthouse.
A full third of the 19th Judicial District Court’s panel is turning over, making five open races with no incumbent running for reelection.
Four of those seats are coming open due to the sitting judges being older than 70 and no longer eligible to run for reelection. Those judges are Donald Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Gail Horne Ray and Brad Myers.
The fifth seat is open after the Louisiana Supreme Court kicked Judge Tiffany Foxworth Roberts off the bench last year for misconduct, finding she lied about her military service, an insurance claim and more.
The three-day qualifying period will run from Aug. 5 to 7. Candidates will choose which division they want to run for when qualifying. While some have already announced their campaigns, voters won't know the official matchups until after the qualifying deadline.
Candidates for the 15 district judge seats must live within the parish.
Candidates can choose either subdistrict to run in and which of the seven seats in that subdistrict to seek, or whether to go for the at-large seat, according to parish Clerk of Court officials.
Depending on where they live, voters will see one of the two subdistricts — plus the at-large seat — on their ballot, for a total of up to eight judgeships, depending on how many races are uncontested.
One final change coming to the district court this election is that each division will be specifically assigned to either criminal or civil proceedings, instead of the longstanding setup where judges handle both a criminal and a civil docket.
The Louisiana Supreme Court directed the change in a June 17 order, saying the earlier system of mixed jurisdictions was “not consistent, transparent, or predictable.”
Candidates and a parishwide race
“If I had to say who the most powerful man in America was, I’d say the president of the United States. To me, the second most powerful is the trial court judge,” said Woody Jenkins, chairman of the Republican Party of East Baton Rouge Parish, speaking at a party luncheon earlier this month before a panel of both newcomers and judges seeking reelection.
To Jenkins, it is important for voters to remember that the local district court judge is the elected official with the power to separate a resident from their children or property, to imprison them and even to order their execution.
At the July 14 luncheon, multiple challengers spoke on their reasons for running for district judge, including sitting commissioners Kory Tauzin and Jermaine Guillory, as well as attorneys Jimmy Manasseh and Elzie Alford.
Multiple sitting judges have also announced their intentions to run for reelection, including Colette Greggs, Tarvald Smith and Eboni Johnson-Rose, who suffered a state Supreme Court-ordered suspension in 2024.
For the first time since the early 1990s, East Baton Rouge Parish will elect a judge from across the entirety of the parish. Attorneys Winston DeCuir Jr. and Justin DeLaune, both with years of civil litigation experience, told The Advocate they have decided to run in part because of the opening of the new parishwide judge’s race.
New district contention
As the courthouse elections draw closer, legal conflict over the existing map remains.
Last year, three sitting judges — Donald Johnson, Ronald Johnson and Ray — sued Gov. Jeff Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill and Secretary of State Nancy Landry over claims that the adoption of Freiberg’s new map illegally diminishes minority voting strength.
The judges argue the creation of the new map violated a federal court order and consent decree from the old judicial redistricting case by eliminating one of the two predominantly Black subdistricts.
Last year, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles denied the request to block the map while the litigation played out. DeGravelles also held the case until the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on Louisiana v. Callais, which weakened the Voting Rights Act and its protections for race-based voting districts.
In the local case’s latest developments, attorneys for Landry and Murrill moved to dismiss the lawsuit in May, with both sides issuing arguments in early June. Their request has yet to be ruled on.