New Orleans could have right-sized its courts, and now it’s happening the hard way

Unlike the other 41 state judicial districts in Louisiana, New Orleans has separate civil and criminal courts along with a host of specialty venues.    

Until this year, New Orleans counted:

• 12 criminal court judges and a magistrate; 
• 14 civil court judges;  
• four juvenile court judges; 
• four city court judges who handle small claims and eviction cases; and
• another seven judges at its Municipal and Traffic Court.

New state laws have removed three criminal court judges and two from traffic court, and New Orleans’ separate criminal and civil clerks of court have been consolidated into a single agency. Landry and lawmakers have implied they’re not done with courthouse cuts, with the governor indicating he’s willing to call a special session for specifically that reason.

There was an opportunity, albeit slim, that the reductions could have been reasonably well received had Republicans made an efficiency argument. The governor and his boosters have instead turned up the volume on an anti-New Orleans campaign that got us to the current state of political discord.    

Any chance at harmony crumbled back in May when Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill sent pointed letters to Moreno, District Attorney Jason Williams and five New Orleans City Council members in May. It warned them they could be removed from office for attempting to call an election to fill the city’s consolidated clerk of court seat. 

The local reaction was equally unreasonable: An New Orleans grand jury indicted Murrill in July for intimidation and malfeasance over her letter. The charges were ultimately dropped, but Landry has launched a Louisiana State Police investigation into who initiated the indictment. 

Moreno and Williams have denied any involvement, and the governor says he’ll keep giving the mayor the silent treatment at least until the investigation concludes. 

This theater of the absurd might have ideological curtains, but make no mistake that this entire saga is about who’s in power behind the scenes.

Rewind back to the months immediately after Katrina when there was a grass-roots movement to merge New Orleans’ seven district assessors, each with disparate approaches to assigning property values, into a single agency. A group of influential and vocal citizens convinced state lawmakers, and then voters statewide, to change the Louisiana Constitution in 2006 to consolidate the assessor’s offices.

That same year, the legislature voted to combine Orleans Parish’s two sheriffs into a single seat. Civil Sheriff Paul Valteau opted not to run against Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who easily won the first election for the consolidated sheriff’s office in 2010. Gusman’s political clout was all the more remarkable, considering he oversaw a city jail under federal supervision for pervasive violence, contraband and abusive personnel.

The desire to continue streamlining in New Orleans waned as the city’s population recovered from Katrina. It dipped from 455,000 in July 2005 to just more than 200,000 immediately after the storm, peaking in 2018 at around 392,000. Its resident count has fallen by about 30,000 since then, and there’s still no local talk of scaling down the judiciary.

Instead, Landry, Murrill and the GOP-led legislature have steered the conversation, and they aren’t likely to give up that control even if New Orleans leaders indicate they’re willing to pare back on judge numbers.