Overlooked in all the hubbub about the likely-momentous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais is how that will impact judicial elections in Louisiana.
The Callais case appears poised to restrict heavily how the racial composition of an electorate can play in drawing districts. While a great deal of attention of its probable outcome has gone to how that impacts Congress, and a small amount to state legislatures, it also could alter the way in which some Louisiana judicial elections occur.
Technically, in states where there are judicial elections, the racial composition of the electorate shouldn’t matter as judges are not parts of policy-making majoritarian branches of government. However, not long after the jurisprudence now challenged in Callais was codified, the Louisiana case Clark v. Edwards was jackknifed (along with its successors) into that. This case basically held that at-large selection violated the Voting Rights Act in nine judicial districts plus East Baton Rouge Family Court and the second district of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. In the following consent decree, two more district courts and the Second Circuit’s first and third districts were offered up.
This meant in these jurisdictions that election sections were established on the basis of race, and that judgeships were assigned to these. But the catch was that, as judges in these courts could hear cases city- or district- or circuit-wide, there was no residency requirement that a judge had to reside within precincts covered by a section within which a judgeship was assigned – mimicking the arrangement in the remaining jurisdictions not part of the decree where judges ran at-large throughout the entire jurisdiction.
So, when these initially were established in 1994, that locked in a discrete number of majority-majority and majority-minority judgeships in each jurisdiction, but open to all comers, as well as left open at-large elections everywhere else. This has resulted in continued dissatisfaction across the political spectrum as time has passed, aggravated by its inflexibility.
Recently, the political left has gone into full panic mode over the likely possibility that former Assistant First District Attorney Hugo Holland will win a judgeship in one of the election sections in Caddo Parish. Holland has carved out a reputation as a fierce litigator for capital punishment. He left his post with the First District after he provided a poor explanation to obtain firearms from a federal government program, which the state inspector general characterized as false, and since has served as a contract attorney for many districts across the state especially prosecuting murder cases.
Holland also was found by the judiciary of not releasing evidence pertinent to capital cases on which he prosecuted in Caddo, although courts also ruled that was immaterial and Holland denied he did so. In each case, the convict was black, which added fuel to the fire that Holland was anti-black in attitudes, as alleged by some leftist attorneys based on selective readings of circumstantial events.
The irony is that if leftists wanted to keep Holland off the bench, they would have a better shot at doing so had the First District maintained its at-large process. Nothing is final until qualifying beings this summer, but Holland intends to run for a seat in one of the two majority-white sections as Republican Judge Katherine Dorroh is retiring (and, putting a humorous spin on the left’s apoplexy, is designated as a civil, specifically domestic, track, mooting the complaints about his record as a criminal prosecutor).
However, Caddo Parish as a whole has almost even registrations between Democrats and Republicans and also between whites and blacks. In this electoral environment, a black Democrat demographically would be, all things equal, a narrow favorite over a white Republican (and to bring more irony into this, Holland actually resides in the one majority-black district).
As it is, the 1994 reapportionment creating the three sections in essence triggers the election of seven whites and four blacks, which was roughly the two-to-one white/black ratio registration ratio of that era. But now that it’s one-to-one, if we adhere to the logic of those opposed to Callais, the system underrepresents blacks.
Yet activists for proportional black representation also reject the at-large method, as demonstrated by the years of litigation in the Thirty-Second District, Terrebonne Parish. In recent years, blacks comprised about 19 percent of the population yet until 2014 the at-large election method kept producing whites as winners in all five judgeships. That prompted a suit that eventually was laughed out of court as it exposed the inherent illogic and agenda behind its filers.
As it so happened, in 2014 for the first time a black judge was elected. Problem was, according an initial judgment of that case applauded by the suers, he ran as a Republican and by their cosmology therefore couldn’t possibly represent black interests. Also notable about this case, they felt they could go to court directly on this matter without having to navigate the Clark consent decree.
Because, according to three Nineteenth Judicial District judges through a case they filed earlier this year, while the state could add election districts to uncovered jurisdictions with impunity if not forced to do so by the courts, it could not tinker with covered jurisdictions. Last year, the Legislature changed how their district (one of those in the decree) elected its judges. When the original legislation passed, creating three sections of five districts each, two were easily majority white by registration. But by 2024, section 2 was narrowly majority black and featured four Democrats and a Republican elected.
In 2025, the Legislature passed Act 243 that specified only two sections, one majority white, one majority black, with seven each and an at-large selection, with no legislative Democrats in support (a few House Republicans also opposed it). Such an arrangement for elections this fall likely will increase the number of Republicans elected in the district.
Thus, the three Democrats sued, claiming because the arrangement was part of the decree it had to go through the courts before going into effect, which conveniently would be after 2026 elections, or the court could veto it. The state disagrees, and with good reason: the main instrument that would allow the court to insert itself, lack of preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice, was declared invalid for almost any case over a dozen years ago.
Perhaps as a recognition of this, several bills were filed this session to start adjusting sections among the covered jurisdictions (including Caddo) that would end up likely affecting partisan balances. Or, these entries may signal recognition that the outcome of Callais will moot Clark and end this byzantine nonsense.
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