Author: manshipxgr

Published: May 30, 2023

By: Piper Naudin, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–A Senate committee advanced a bill, 5-1, giving voters a chance to amend language in the Louisiana Constitution to say that involuntary servitude and slavery “are forever prohibited.”

Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, presented House Bill 211 to the Senate Judiciary A Committee. The committee approved amendments clarifying that the bill would not affect labor programs within the criminal justice system.

Committee Chairman Sen. Barrow Peacock, R-Bossier City, questioned the purpose of the bill if it would not provide any real change. Jordan stated that HB 211 and its amendments were just language clean-up measures.

“This bill has a symbolic meaning,” Jordan said. “It is impactful and meaningful to all of the black men, women, and children in Louisiana.”

Read more at Bossier Press-Tribune

Published: May 30, 2023

By: Jenna Bridges, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — A Senate committee advanced a bill, 4-1, that would allow permitless
concealed carry for residents over 21.

Rep. Danny McCormick, R-Oil City, presented House Bill 131 to the Senate Judiciary B
committee Tuesday.

The committee amended the bill to change the age requirement for carrying concealed firearms without obtaining a permit or training to 21 from 18.

Three Republicans and Sen. Gregory W. Tarver Sr., a Democrat from Shreveport, supported the bill. Sen. Joseph Bouie Jr., D-New Orleans voted in opposition to it.

Read more at WBRZ

Published: May 26, 2023

By: Claire Sullivan, LSU Manship School News Service

The Louisiana Legislature has unanimously approved a $50 billion plan to protect and restore the state’s diminishing coast over the next 50 years.

“We’re not just throwing money at the problem,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday in a press conference lauding the plan that is updated by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority every six years. “We’re doing it in a way that really makes sense, that follows the science.”

Edwards called the plan the most robust coastal effort in the country and maybe the world.

The Legislature also unanimously approved the authority’s budget for the next fiscal year, which totaled an unprecedented $1.6 billion for coastal restoration and hurricane protection projects.

In a session marked by battles over the budget and cultural issues, the hefty coastal plan received no dissent from lawmakers.

Read more at Louisiana Illuminator

Published: May 26, 2023

By: Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. — The House voted 48-38 to kill a bill Thursday that would have created an avenue of hope for prisoners who were convicted by non-unanimous juries before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice.

House Bill 588 would have created a special committee for providing parole for up to roughly 1,500 people who had been convicted by non-unanimous juries before the court ruling in 2020.

The term non-unanimous describes juries that were split in their decisions. Prior to the court ruling, people could be convicted of felonies, including murder, with a 10-2 vote. 

The author of the bill, Rep. Randal Gaines, D-LaPlace, spoke emotionally on the need for the bill. Residents of Louisiana voted to end convictions with non-unanimous juries in 2018, but the wording of the amendment was proactive, not reactive.

A Supreme Court case, Ramos v. Louisiana, confirmed in 2020 that non-unanimous juries were unconstitutional. However, the court determined that this decision would not apply to previous cases.

Read more at WWL-TV

Published: May 26, 2023

By: Claire Sullivan, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — The mother of LSU student Madison Brooks, who died in January, pleaded with a House committee Thursday to pass a bill to hold bars responsible for serving people under 21.

But, despite her emotional testimony, members of the House Judiciary Committee shot down the bill in a tied 6-6 vote, expressing concerns that insurance rates would spike for bars and that sophisticated fake IDs would leave good-faith bartenders open to legal action.

“I think this is a horrible bill,” said Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, who was supported by two other Republicans and three Democrats from New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

He said the bill would effectively protect people breaking the law by drinking under 21 by placing the legal responsibility on bar owners, thus making them more vulnerable to lawsuits.

“If you don’t like this, for goodness’ sake, show me what you like, because we’ve got to do something,” Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, the bill’s author, said in response.

Police say Brooks, 19, was raped by two men after leaving Reggie’s Bar in the Tigerland Bar district near LSU. Then, police say, she was left by the side of the road, where she was struck by a vehicle and left with fatal injuries.

Read more at BRProud

Published: May 25, 2023

By: Eliza Stanley, LSU Manship School News Service

Crime is the top concern for Louisiana residents for the first time in 20 years, according to an LSU survey released Tuesday.

The Louisiana Survey, conducted by LSU’s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs, shows that crime is the primary concern for about one-fifth of Louisiana residents, with 80% of those surveyed saying crime has increased over the last few years.

Since 2004, the annual survey has asked participants to name the single most important issue they would like the state government to prioritize. For the first time in the survey’s history, crime ranked first on the list.

Nineteen percent of the people interviewed said crime is the state’s most important issue. In most years, only about six to 10% of the respondents have named crime as their top concern.

Four out of five Louisiana residents also said that crime has increased in recent years. This view is common across genders, ages, racial and ethnic identities, education levels, household incomes and political parties.

Read more at Louisiana Illuminator

Published: May 24, 2023

By: Jenna Bridges | LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — A House committee on Wednesday rejected a bill, 11-4, to abolish the death penalty.

Rep. Kyle M. Green, Jr., D-Marrero, presented House Bill 228 to the House Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice, citing the “racial bend” toward African Americans, the financial benefits to the state and the risk of wrongful conviction in his arguments for abolishing the death penalty.

“It is my personal belief that the death penalty is a barbaric practice that has no place in a modern, civilized society,” Green said. “It is a punishment that is irreversible, final and often applied unfairly.”

Green said the death penalty has been shown to be racially biased because people of color are more likely to be sentenced to death than white people. He said Louisiana has the highest rate of per capita death sentences in the U.S. and that minorities make up a disproportionate number of those sentences.

Read more at American Press

Published: May 24, 2023

By: Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE—Republican committee chairman Fred Mills joined Democrats on Wednesday to kill a bill that would have ended gender-affirming care for minors.

House Bill 648 failed to make it out of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee after a 5-4 vote to defer the bill.

Mills, R-New Iberia and the committee’s chairman, joined four Democrats in voting to defer the bill. Mills is a pharmacist and is in his last term of office.

In a final statement before issuing his vote, Mills said, “I guess I’ve always, in my heart of hearts, have believed that a decision should be made by a patient and a physician. I believe in the physicians of Louisiana.”

The bill, authored by Rep. Gabe Firment, R- Pollock, would have prohibited doctors from performing medical procedures or prescribing medication that alters the appearance of individuals for the purpose of gender dysphoria on individuals under the age of 18.

Read more at WBRZ

Published: May 24, 2023

By: Allison Allsop, LSU Manship News Service

The House passed a bill 78-22 Tuesday that would prohibit certain foreign adversaries or people connected to them from acquiring immovable property in Louisiana.

House Bill 537, authored by Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, caused a stir at a recent committee hearing with many people protesting that it would allow landlords and home sellers to deny access to immigrants from countries deemed adversaries.

The bill lists China, Hong Kong, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela under the leadership of President Nicholas Maduro as adversaries.

The bill was amended several times both by the committee and on the House floor to address the concerns.

Read more at Louisiana Illuminator

Published: May 24, 2023

By: Claire Sullivan, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. — As controversy swells in Louisiana over library content, the House Committee on Education voted 8-3 Tuesday to advance a bill that would require public libraries to limit minors’ access to sexually explicit material.

Under the bill, authored by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, libraries would have to create card systems through which parents would decide whether their child could check out explicit material. Cloud pitched her bill as protecting parental rights.

Libraries would also have to take community standards into consideration when acquiring materials for minors. Critics worry this would target LGBTQ content, which has been a major source of opposition at local library control meetings.

Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican running for governor, was at the hearing to support the bill. As libraries have become political battlegrounds in Louisiana, Landry has pushed to restrict children’s access to material.

Landry released a “Protecting Innocence” report in February that included book excerpts he described as “extremely graphic sexual content.” The books included “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson and “The Bluest Eye” by Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison.

Read more at KTBS