Wesley Muller, Louisiana Illuminator

Refinery surged super-toxic sludge into LA waters — and kept it quiet for months

GRAMERCY — For several months, a River Parishes refinery unlawfully discharged industrial toxic waste containing arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other toxic heavy metals into public areas and waterways, state records show.

The company, Atlantic Alumina, also known as Atalco, has so far racked up 23 violation notices from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality after inspectors first discovered the pollution in August. It involves a slurry of industrial “red mud” byproduct that has eroded through the giant levees surrounding the facility’s waste containment lakes and spilled onto public property. The toxic sludge has killed vegetation and contaminated the land along its path to a local drainage system that flows to the Blind River Swamp of Lake Maurepas, according to a 606-page LDEQ inspection report finalized in March.

The incident marks the first known case of red mud levee breaches at an American bauxite refinery. When asked for details, LDEQ spokesman Gregory Langley had little information to share about the prolonged discharge other than to say it is currently under investigation with the agency’s enforcement division. The only enforcement action taken as of May 29 is a warning letter LDEQ sent to Atalco.

A review of thousands of pages of state and federal documents and interviews with scientists and area residents indicate that Atalco polluted public land and state waterways with the most toxic non-radioactive elements on the planet and allowed that pollution to continue for months — never notifying the outside community.

Atalco’s refinery occupies roughly 3 square miles of land where St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes meet on the Mississippi River’s east bank. The site specializes in refining bauxite, a rust-colored powder of raw metals and minerals, into aluminum oxide or “alumina” in the form of an ultra-fine white powder. Atalco sells the alumina to metal smelters that need it to make finished aluminum. Opened in 1958 as Kaiser Aluminum, the Gramercy facility is the only remaining bauxite refinery in the United States and therefore the nation’s only domestic source of a critical metal feedstock.

Atalco produced 669,261 metric tons of aluminum oxide last year, state records show. For every ton of aluminum produced from Atalco’s work, bauxite refining generates an estimated 2.5 tons of waste byproduct, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

One of the main problems in refining bauxite is there are not many good options for what to do with all that waste, most of which takes the form of a thick red mud.

The waste comes from a part of the process in which bauxite is heated in a pressurized vessel with sodium hydroxide, a highly caustic chemical. The alumina compounds are then filtered out and separated, while the toxic byproduct is stored in the facility’s six red mud lakes. The lakes are open-air ponds, each roughly 150-200 acres in size surrounded by large earthen levees, some as high as 50 feet, meant to contain the thick liquid waste.

Four of the lakes, including a “surge” or overflow basin, were constructed in the early 1970s without any liners that would help prevent the heavy metals and chemicals from seeping into the soil below.

The Atalco alumina refinery in Gramercy suffered numerous levee breaches around its red mud waste lakes, sending arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other toxic chemicals into public areas and waterways for a period of several months. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)

“It is very dangerous,” said Slawomir Lomnicki, an environmental scientist at LSU. “There can be a lot of toxic metals leaching out of it and getting into the groundwater.”

Groundwater contamination from leaching is a constant risk that exists when Atalco’s systems are operating normally. The public drinking water system in St. James Parish regularly monitors for that kind of contamination, according to Parish President Peter Dufresne. Officials with the St. John Parish water system did not answer multiple phone calls last week.

A greater risk to the community from bauxite refineries in general is the rare case of a levee breach at a red mud lake, which can cause toxic waste to directly contaminate public waters and soils, scientists said.

Until this reporting, the last known breach at a bauxite refinery occurred in Hungary in 2010. The failure of a red mud reservoir sent 35 million cubic feet of waste into nearby villages, killing 10 people and injuring 150 others.

In the wake of that incident, industry officials told the American public that a levee breach at Louisiana’s bauxite refinery would be unlikely because the levees are “periodically checked by state and federal regulators,” according to a news report from that time.

That unlikely event has happened at Atalco. With a caustic level higher than drain cleaner and elevated concentrations of heavy metals, Atalco’s waste slurry eroded through levees in multiple locations at multiple lakes, forming canyons as deep as 10 feet that allowed the toxic waste to escape, records show.

A water sample LDEQ had tested from a public ditch outside the plant detected arsenic at a concentration nearly 1,400% higher than the level considered safe by state groundwater and EPA drinking water limits. The sample also contained cadmium at levels above those same limits.

A soil sample taken from the same ditch contained mercury, beryllium, cadmium and chromium — all at concentrations above the average background levels found in U.S. soils. The cadmium was nearly 400% higher, and the chromium was 900% higher than LDEQ’s standard limits for soil. Chromium is the most toxic non-radioactive element on earth and is about three times more poisonous than arsenic, according to EPA toxicity factors.

Historic water quality data for the Blind River, recorded from 1979-99, show heavy metal concentrations nowhere near those levels.

Chemical residue in the public drainage ditch along the highway to the west of Atalco. (LDEQ)

When the levees broke

“With this kind of facility, the worst major accident that can happen is a breach of the lake [levees],” said Corinne Gibb, a chemist who works with the environmental watchdog Louisiana Bucket Brigade. The group has monitored incidents at the alumina refinery for years.

It is unknown when the mud lake levees first began to erode, but state and federal records show the pollution lasted for months and continued even after Atalco became aware of the problem.

The company has not responded to the Illuminator’s multiple requests for an interview.

Federal inspectors with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) documented several hazards at Atalco’s levees last summer and voiced concerns about the risks they posed to the workers at the plant.

“There were several mud lakes at the facility that was (sic) not being maintained,” MSHA inspector Brandon Olivier wrote in a citation dated June 25, 2024.

Trees and shrubs obscured sections of the levees, making thorough inspections impossible, Olivier added.

A few weeks later, on Aug. 14, the MSHA issued Atalco another citation after inspectors discovered caustic waste “seeping through various locations on the east and west side of Mud Lake #4” and flowing downhill “into the roadway and ditches.”

LDEQ later noted the Aug. 14 citation was the first formal written notice Atalco received about the levees having a breach with dangerous toxic waste escaping from its facility.

The location of one of the breaches in the 50-foot-high levee around Atalco’s Red Mud Lake 4, which spilled toxic chemicals into public areas and waterways for a period of several months. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)

Other dangers present at the Atalco plant had already drawn regulators’ attention at that time.

Just days prior, on Aug. 4, the public was reminded just how dangerous the chemicals at Atalco could be when 45-year-old Curtis Diggs, a contract worker from Waste-Pro USA, fell into a pit of sodium hydroxide at the plant because a grate that covered the pit was missing and the entire floor was flooded with several inches of the caustic cloudy liquid. The chemical, the same that is stored in the red mud lakes, left Diggs with severe burns from which he did not recover, according to LDEQ records. He died in a New Orleans hospital on Sept 2.

MSHA investigated the fatality and learned that Atalco personnel had removed the grate on July 30, 2024, to try to pump out the flooded area and failed to put anything in its place or even a warning marker, creating a dangerous pitfall left open for five days and virtually invisible. MSHA charged Atalco with three regulatory violations and charged Waste-Pro USA with two, faulting both companies for “aggravated conduct” that involved an extraordinary pattern of negligence, though it’s unclear if any fines or penalties have been issued as of May 30, according to federal records.

Atalco uses sodium hydroxide to refine bauxite into alumina. After the refinement process, it stores the used sodium hydroxide in the lakes with the other waste.

Despite the heightened scrutiny from state and federal regulators at the time, by mid-September Atalco still had not repaired the levee breaches to Red Mud Lake 4 that federal inspectors cited the month before. Nor did the company thoroughly inspect its other lakes to look for similar breaches because, as the records indicate, similar breaches were there — if only the company had looked.

On Sept. 17, MSHA inspectors found a breach in the levee around another lake, Red Mud Lake 1 East, with a stream of hazardous waste flowing freely across the roadway.

“The caustic was observed seeping through the side of the levee for approximately 50 yards across the roadway and to the ditch,” the citation states. “The mud lake is access[ed] by the plant operators daily and contractors for service, and this condition exposes them to injuries if there is a dam failure due to the seepage.”

One of the erosion canyons in Atalco’s levees. (LDEQ)

Based on further inspections that same day, MSHA cited Atalco for a third levee break — at Red Mud Lake 2.

On that single day, three of Atalco’s six waste lakes had confirmed breaches with streams of poisonous chemicals flowing freely to areas they weren’t permitted to go, including the Blind River Swamp — a popular recreational fishing spot in the Lake Maurepas backwaters.

LDEQ officials first arrived at the plant Sept. 20 to initiate a routine compliance inspection. Agency records show state officials met with Atalco managers, conducted an interview and toured parts of the facility. However, they were unable to inspect some of the lakes and levees because the plant manager told them the access roads were too wet to travel on.

LDEQ first documented the levee breaches five days later when they were contacted by the federal inspectors, according to state records. Atalco had still not officially notified LDEQ of the levee breaches — something the company should have done immediately upon learning of them in accordance with Atalco’s permit requirements as well as state and federal laws.

Local officials have also been kept in the dark. When asked about the events during an impromptu meeting with a reporter Thursday at the State Capitol, St. James Parish President Peter Dufresne said he was unaware of Atalco’s levee breaks that contaminated neighboring land and drainage with toxic waste. Dufresne declined an interview but asked the Illuminator for copies of LDEQ’s inspection reports.

In October, the records show, state inspectors discovered erosion channels in the levee of a fourth lake, Red Mud Lake 3. They also saw for themselves the levee breaches that federal inspectors documented two months before. The erosion channels were still there, and the caustic waste was still escaping from those lakes.

So much waste had escaped that it also overwhelmed the facility’s secondary containment system, which is a network of interior ditches just outside of the levees used to catch any chemical spills or leaks from the lakes. The backup ditch at one location had overflowed, sending the toxic slurry across the highway just north of the Veterans Memorial Bridge.

Atalco was also, as a matter of protocol, unlawfully using a stormwater ditch as a backup containment ditch. Three company officials, apparently unaware that they weren’t permitted to use the ditch for toxic waste disposal, told LDEQ inspectors that they routinely used it for containment, according to the inspection files.

In other areas, LDEQ inspectors saw that the waste slurry had accumulated to “nearly the height of the levee” in some of the lakes, the agency’s files note. The waste level in the lakes should never be allowed to rise higher than two feet from the top of the levee.

Ultimately, in site visits over the next three months, LDEQ inspectors viewed and documented levee breaches at four of Atalco’s six lakes, prompting the state agency to cite Atalco multiple times for failing to inspect and failing to repair the levees.

A screenshot of one of the many images LDEQ inspectors included in their report on Atalco’s levee breaches. (LDEQ)

Erosion of the levees was a very real possibility that Atalco had long known about. In its 2010 permit renewal applications with the state, the company had addressed the topic at length, promising to prevent erosion by conducting daily inspections of the levees and keeping written logs of those inspections. The state included those as specific ongoing requirements in the final permit issued to Atalco. At that time, the company was in the process of raising its levees from 30 feet to 50 feet high, according to the permit application.

By the time state and federal officials began prodding the company last August, Atalco had not consistently inspected its lakes and levees in over three years and was missing hundreds of daily inspection records from July 30, 2021, to Dec. 18, 2024, according to LDEQ’s summary of violations.

On Oct. 23, state officials noted the company was constructing a new berm to contain the breach at Red Mud Lake 4, which Atalco had known about since at least Aug. 14.

The breach at Red Mud Lake 3 continued until Dec. 4, according to the LDEQ file. On that day, Atalco managers accompanied state inspectors into the field when they noticed multiple streams emerging near an access road and traced it back to “one erosion channel with an estimated depth of at least 10 feet.”

You would definitely get injuries and skin burns from it. The plants and any fish in the area would die from that. You can’t survive that high of a pH.

– Corinne Gibb, chemist, Louisiana Bucket Brigade

The chemistry of Atalco’s toxic waste

During their site visits in October, the state inspectors took pH readings from various pools of standing waste that had escaped from the lakes

The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, with water having a neutral pH of around 7. Lower values indicate acidity, while higher values indicate alkalinity. Substances at the extreme ends of the scale in either direction can eat through solid materials such as steel and concrete and are very dangerous to most life forms.

The LDEQ detected high pH at every location, with one puddle logged at a high of 12.49 — the same alkalinity as most caustic drain clog removers and ammonia-based cleaners. The inspectors also photographed dead or dying vegetation, petrochemical sheens, and white and yellow chemical residues in many of the locations where the slurry had traveled.

“Just the pH by itself is concerning … That is very high,” Gibb, the chemist, said. “You would definitely get injuries and skin burns from it. The plants and any fish in the area would die from that. You can’t survive that high of a pH.”

State inspectors had testing done on water and soil samples from off-site locations in the public drainage system and on-site locations near the erosion streams. Simultaneously, Atalco personnel collected their own batch of samples and sent them to a separate lab for independent testing.

LDEQ’s soil samples contained significantly elevated levels of cadmium, chromium and nickel — all toxic carcinogens. Atalco’s samples reaffirmed the LDEQ’s lab results and detected even higher levels at one location. The company’s sample taken from public property outside the facility contained cadmium at roughly 1,000% higher than what the state considers safe for people. Additionally, the levels of chromium and nickel measured 1,700% and 300% above their respective state standards, the lab reports show.

Gibb and Lomnicki, the LSU scientist, said these three heavy metals, along with arsenic, are among the most dangerous non-radioactive substances on the planet. Exposure to excessive levels can cause a range of serious health issues, including cancer and blood poisoning.

Ganga Hettiarachchi, a Kansas State University professor of soil and environmental chemistry, said cadmium could pose the greatest long-term risk because it spreads easily and accumulates in living organisms over time. Enough small doses during a given time period can add up to a fatal dose, she said.

Cadmium is highly toxic to humans in short- and long-term exposure settings. Small concentrations ingested or inhaled can cause gastrointestinal or respiratory illness, while higher concentrations can cause cancer, cell death, neurological damage and organ system failure, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Increasing the risk from cadmium is that it can be easily spread across far distances and transfer from soil into crops, Hettiarachchi said, posing risks to humans and animals if they eat those crops.

“It could easily end up in our food,” she said. “That has been historically the main pathway for cadmium.”

If cadmium gets into surface water or groundwater, it can become an even bigger problem, especially if that water is used for irrigation, she added.

“The area of damage can expand further and further over time,” Hettiarachchi said.

Cadmium was present at elevated levels in two of Atalco’s water samples and four of LDEQ’s. The highest concentration was 400% above the level considered safe in a water sample taken from an erosion channel within the perimeter of the facility. It also had high levels of chromium and lead.

All seven water samples that LDEQ had tested contained elevated levels of arsenic. One of them taken from outside the levee of a red mud lake detected arsenic at a level 9,000% higher than state and federal safe limits, and it contained high levels of cadmium, nickel and thallium. Six out of the seven samples Atalco personnel collected contained arsenic at levels beyond what is considered safe.

LDEQ has yet to address the risks Atalco’s red mud runoff could pose to the community. Langley, the agency’s spokesman, said it has yet to determine what the public impact might be.

“Obviously those are things we don’t want going into state waterways,” Langley said.

Part Two: For some nearby residents, the levee breaches at Atalco are just the latest incident in a familiar pattern. The second story in this series reveals why the incident at Atalco was foreseeable based on the history of the plant and the many accidents and environmental exposures to the nearby communities.

“They’re turning a blind eye to it,” said Gail LeBouef, who’s lived near the plant since 1999.

Customer pays $2,138 just to be seated at a New Orleans restaurant

People are buying and selling table reservations at iconic New Orleans eateries for eye-popping amounts via third-party websites, often without the restaurant’s knowledge.

Critics want lawmakers to ban the burgeoning online business they consider a racket, arguing that it undermines the fine-dining experience and could potentially leave restaurants with empty tables. However, proponents of the practice say it benefits both diners and restaurants when done properly.

Some iconic restaurants topped the list during a recent scan of the New Orleans section of Appointment Trader, one of several platforms designed to let people with scheduling conflicts sell highly coveted reservations on the open market. A Saturday night reservation at Brennan’s later this month is available for a suggested bid of $235 — a discount compared to the whopping $2,138 someone paid for a four-top at Antoine’s during the Super Bowl weekend.

Are those prices based on genuine demand for seating at the restaurants, or is it artificially inflated by technology built to cash in on wealthy tourists desperate to dine in the city’s elite culinary corners?

That’s a question Louisiana lawmakers will try to answer in the coming months as they consider House Bill 90, sponsored by Rep. Troy Hebert, R-Lafayette. The legislation could ban companies such as Appointment Trader, Dorsia and Wuw Wuw from operating in Louisiana.

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Specifically, Hebert’s bill prohibits third-party companies from offering or arranging reservations at any restaurants that have not agreed to the service through a contract.

Hebert could not be reached for comment, but the Louisiana Restaurant Association, a trade group that asked Hebert to file the legislation, said it is modeled after similar laws recently enacted in other states such as New York. They all describe the legislation as a measure to prevent “restaurant reservation fraud.”

Appointment Trader, founded in 2021, lets users buy and sell reservations and appointments of all kinds through auction-style bidding. Sellers can set their own asking prices, and bidders can make offers at any rate. Additionally, prospective buyers can use the platform as a concierge service, offering a fee to any user who can secure them a reservation at a particular establishment.

In its early days, the platform was limited mostly to hotspots such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. It has since gained popularity and expanded into smaller markets including New Orleans and virtually anywhere else one has a reservation they want to sell. As of Thursday, the platform had clocked over $6 million in trades within the last 12 months.

In a phone interview, Louisiana Restaurant Association spokeswoman Wendy Waren said platforms like Appointment Trader are selling reservations without the restaurants’ permission or knowledge. If no one buys the reservations, tables just sit empty, which can cause seating delays or prevent genuine customers from getting a reservation and actually bringing business to the restaurant, she said.

“It creates artificial scarcity,” Waren said. “It’s like somebody’s hijacking the process.”

‘Our backs are really against the wall’: New Orleans restaurants brace for new tariffs

New York hospitality trade groups have accused the platforms of using software bots to snap up reservations and sell them on what they call a “black market.”

Appointment Trader founder Jonas Frey said he is just trying to solve a problem with a legitimate service that can benefit all parties, particularly the restaurants. The 37-year-old software engineer is a German immigrant who came to the U.S. five years ago and came up with the idea for his platform while waiting in a long line at his local motor vehicles office in Las Vegas. He now lives in Miami with his wife and is serious about maintaining legitimacy on his platform, he said.

“I’ve basically lived in a computer all my life, and nothing gives me more joy — well almost nothing — than when thousands of people use the software I built to solve a problem in their life,” Frey said.

In phone interviews this week, Frey explained how users on his platform must sell at least half of the reservations that they post or risk account suspension. This prevents people from trying to book all the available tables and hoard them to create artificial demand. Also, the free-market style platform means that unsold reservations put downward pressure on the prices in a given area, he said.

The app is still quite new in the New Orleans market as there have only been a handful of transactions, so the current 90-day average bid prices have been skewed by reservations sold during special events such as the Super Bowl. Frey said those “one-offs” are not the norm.

In a market such as New Orleans, diners can typically get reservations without paying if it’s a normal weekend, but it can be next-to-impossible at certain restaurants in other big cities across the country. Reservation trading lets people sell valuable bookings that they, for whatever reason, can’t use or no longer want.

When someone has a coveted reservation but encounters a scheduling conflict that prevents them from using it, they might not bother calling to cancel, leading to what restaurants call “no-show reservations.”

Jonas Frey, founder of Appointment Trader. (Submitted)

Just a few no-shows can disrupt a restaurant’s operations and cost it thousands in lost sales. Approximately 28% of American diners have admitted to ghosting on their reservations, according to a 2021 OpenTable survey.

“Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you could just resell it?” Frey asked.

Lisa Blount, director of marketing for Antoine’s, said she’s all in favor of entrepreneurs figuring out new ways to make money in the restaurant industry. She’s less worried about no-shows because Antoine’s requires credit cards to make reservations, but she does have a few other concerns.

At Antoine’s and other fine dining eateries, the staff take a lot of time to learn about their customers when they make a reservation, Blount said. They might be on a tight schedule, have diet restrictions or could be visiting for a special occasion. This kind of information allows the restaurant to make preparations with food ordering, shift scheduling and other arrangements.

“There’s a lot more to coming to our restaurant than just buying a ticket,” Blount said. “We try to know a lot about you before you even get in the door.”

Blount said she worries that trading or selling reservations to unknown customers could stymie a restaurant’s ability to offer its best level of service. She also said she hates the idea of an unwitting customer paying for a reservation and then showing up and seeing empty tables because it turned out to be a slow evening. The customer would feel scammed, and it could damage the restaurant’s reputation, she said.

Still, Blount said she’s open to the concept of reservation trading if there are ways to control for those kinds of issues.

Frey said he is actively trying to partner with restaurants to make the app better for all parties. His platform currently takes a 30% cut of each transaction, and he offers partner restaurants an equal share of the net proceeds. So far, Frey said he has not landed any partnership agreements as he tries to keep his company alive through an onslaught of state legislation.

Seafood testers find Shreveport restaurants deceiving customers with foreign shrimp

Bans on reservation trading apps are already in place in New York and Arizona, and a similar bill is currently pending in the Illinois legislature.

Some large corporations could lose a chunk of their business if reservation trading catches on. Restaurant booking platforms such as OpenTable and Resy make money by charging restaurants a fee for every reservation customers make through their app.

Platforms like Appointment Trader threaten to disrupt the online booking sector by flipping that business model on its head. Under Frey’s partnership model, restaurants would get paid just to let customers inside.

But all that depends on genuine demand existing in a particular market area.

“There’s so many restaurants here,” Blount said from her New Orleans office. “We’re not New York.”

'Wanted to choke' her: Court case reveals text parish president sent about opponent

NEW ORLEANS – Evidence unveiled Tuesday in federal court showed St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard’s family stood to make money from a land deal she helped facilitate through rezoning efforts.

Hotard testified that she was unaware of the connection at the time.

The jury heard witness testimony and saw text messages that indicated Hotard maintained frequent communications about the zoning matter with her mother-in-law, Darla Gaudet, who owned several tracts of land within the proposed site of a now-defunct Greenfield industrial grain terminal. The jurors also learned that Hotard’s husband had some financial interest in the deal as well.

Hotard and the St. John Parish Council were in negotiations with Greenfield as the company sought permits and land for the project planned for the Wallace community. Before they could close the deal, council members needed to rezone the land from residential to heavy industrial. Hotard personally signed the application for Greenfield, testifying she was following direction from the parish council.

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Testifying from the witness stand Tuesday, Gaudet admitted she would have benefited financially if the rezoning was approved. She acknowledged that her land, which she owns through her family business, was of particular value to Greenfield because it contained a railroad spur the company needed for its operations.

“I’m not the only business in St. John the Baptist Parish that would’ve benefited from it,” Gaudet said, suggesting many other people had financial interests in the deal.

Gaudet admitted that her son, Russell Gaudet, who married Hotard in 2019, is the beneficiary of a family trust that owns the land, but she said his share of the trust is only about 8.3%.

Gaudet’s land and the other parcels that made up the proposed Greenfield site have been at the center of a zoning issue that dates back decades. Under questioning from Hotard’s defense lawyers, Gaudet pointed out that her land was zoned as industrial when she originally purchased it in 2013. She also said her son won’t receive the land until she dies.

Later in Tuesday’s proceedings, Hotard took the stand in her own defense and said she was unaware that her husband was a beneficiary of the trust.

“We just married five years ago … We don’t discuss his family’s business at all,” the parish president said.

Free speech lawsuit

While Hotard’s financial interests are not directly on trial in the lawsuit, they form the basis of the case before U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown. The dispute arose from a Nov. 28, 2023, parish council meeting at which Wallace resident Joy Banner sought to inform members about the Gaudet family land trust and an ethics complaint she filed on the matter the month before.

Banner intended to speak against a resolution Hotard had placed on the meeting’s agenda to ask the parish council to hire an attorney to defend her in the ethics investigation. Video of that council meeting was played in court Monday. It showed Hotard interrupting Banner, with Council Chairman Michael Wright stopping Banner to read a state law he said prohibited public disclosure of information from an ethics investigation.

A federal judge ruled in 2014 that the law in question was unconstitutional. Wright testified that he wasn’t aware of that ruling and didn’t notice a note at the top of the statute marking it as unconstitutional.

Banner would later file a federal lawsuit against Hotard and Wright, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated at the meeting. The defense asserted in court Tuesday that Hotard and Wright felt they had a duty to stop Banner’s speech because they believed it was a crime to speak publicly about ethics investigations.

“She was getting off topic and speaking about an ethics complaint that to my understanding was confidential,” Wright said from the witness stand.

They showed the jury letters and documents the Louisiana Board of Ethics sent to Hotard and Banner stamped with the word “CONFIDENTIAL.”

Mallory Guillot, an ethics board staff attorney who handled the complaint against Hotard, testified the confidentiality restrictions apply only to the members and staff of the Ethics Board and not to the general public. Under cross examination, Guillot acknowledged the investigation found Hotard committed no violations but could not elaborate because Judge Brown has limited testimony about the ethics findings.

Jury sees Hotard’s text messages

The first half of Tuesday’s proceedings were dominated by text message evidence the defendants unsuccessfully fought to keep private. They revealed Hotard kept her mother-in-law informed about the Greenfield rezoning application. In one instance, Hotard offered to text her a “play by play” of an April 9, 2024, council meeting. Gaudet texted “Thank goodness” upon learning the council’s rezoning vote passed.

One of Banner’s attorneys, William Most, showed several other text messages to the jury in which the women spoke disparagingly about Banner even before the November 2023 meeting. In an exchange dated Oct. 16, 2023, Hotard texted Gaudet: “I wanted to choke that woman!” and called Banner a “b--ch.”

In her testimony, Gaudet claimed Hotard could have been speaking about someone else. Most confronted the parish president with her testimony from an earlier deposition in which she said she believed it was Banner that Hotard wanted to choke.

Ike Spears, lead attorney for Hotard and Wright, argued Banner had refused to follow the parish council rules on the public comment during the November 2023 meeting.

Wright and other defense witnesses said it has long been the rule at council meetings to only allow the public to speak specifically about agenda items. Under questioning from Most, Wright acknowledged the council has never formally adopted such a rule.

Spears also pushed back against implied corruption allegations against Hotard, saying the parish president knew nothing of her husband’s family business until Banner filed her lawsuit.

Gov. Landry targets 'noncitizens’'in Louisiana

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called a news conference Monday to publicize his signing of an executive order that will monitor “noncitizens” in the state and discourage them from trying to register to vote.

His action follows a trend from other conservative Republicans who allege, without firm proof, that noncitizens will try to vote illegally in this year’s election. Landry referenced illegal immigration several times during the news conference, criticizing Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, for their border policy.

“Everytime an illegal alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a citizen. That’s a disenfranchisement of American citizens,” Landry said.

The governor’s order requires all state agencies that offer voter registration forms to the public, as called for under federal law, include notice that it is illegal for noncitizens to vote. It also directs the state Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) to compile a list of people who have been issued a temporary, 180-day Louisiana driver’s license or identification card. The agency will then provide the list to Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican who is not related to the governor, so she can cross-check it against voter rolls.

Attorney General Liz Murrill, who also took part in the news conference, said the OMV has issued more than 40,000 temporary IDs. Those applicants could have been given voter registration forms, she added, and some might have unintentionally registered.

Nancy Landry said 48 noncitizens have been removed from Louisiana’s voter rolls since 2022, though she could not confirm whether any of them have actually voted.

Monday’s news conference came about two weeks after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, issued an executive order removing 6,303 “noncitizens” who had “accidentally or maliciously attempted to register” to vote in his state, according to a NBC News report.

The news spread quickly with GOP leaders holding it up as evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Youngkin’s Aug. 7 order didn’t state whether any of the 6,303 people removed from the voter rolls over the past 18 months actually voted or if there was an error and they later turned out to be citizens. The Virginia governor’s office didn’t provide that information when asked by NBC News.

Local officials who spoke to NBC News attributed the bulk of the removals to errors made when people filled out paperwork or online forms when asked about their citizenship.

Gov. Landry used his executive order to slam Biden’s immigration policy for the U.S.-Mexico border, saying misleadingly that 7.8 million people have entered the country illegally since he entered the White House. The statistic he cited refers to the number of Border Patrol “encounters” and is not the same thing as the number of individuals who illegally crossed the border. The governor included the statistic, as well as the number of “gotaways” — those who cross but aren’t apprehended — in his order.

The governor’s description U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics are often misconstrued and fail to capture the full picture of immigration. As an analysis in the Christian Science Monitor in April pointed out, “it’s not accurate to simply add up encounters and gotaways as a proxy for illegal immigration.”

Fact-checking state leaders claims

Claim: Gov. Landry said Monday the Biden administration has allowed 7.8 million people to enter the United States illegally.

Fact check: False. The number the governor was looking for is actually higher at about 8.3 million, but it is inaccurate to refer to it as the number of people who entered the U.S. illegally or the number of people who crossed the border in general. The number refers to “encounters” that Border Patrol agents had at the border, including interactions with undocumented migrants who were refused entry or were later expelled, as well as those who were later granted legal status. Many “encounters” are interactions that agents have repeatedly with the same people who try more than once to cross the border. As Congressional Research Service staff told lawmakers: “Encounter statistics refer to counts of interactions between USBP and migrants, and not counts of unique individuals.”

Claim: Secretary of State Nancy Landry said U.S. Border Patrol has reported 1.1 million migrant encounters at the nation’s southern border so far this year.

Fact check: Her number is actually low. Figures through July show more than 1.9 million encounters, though the numbers have been in sharp decline since Biden’s new immigration policies took effect in June.

The immigration crisis has been worsening for decades. While there have been more border encounters under Biden than there were under President Donald Trump, there were also more encounters in 2019 under Trump than there were in any of the eight years under President Barack Obama. A significant portion of the higher counts under Biden have been attributed to a Trump policy that allowed migrants to try multiple times to enter the U.S., inflating encounter numbers, according to a congressional report on the immigration data.

Under Trump’s pandemic-era rule known as Title 42, in place until May 2023, Border Patrol agents could expel migrants on public health grounds, but migrants could try again to cross without penalty, driving a fourfold increase in people trying to enter the U.S. illegally more than once per fiscal year. According to the Christian Science Monitor, this drove the reentry rate from 7% in 2019 to 27% in 2021.

Gov. Landry also failed to mention that border encounters and apprehensions have plummeted since Biden’s new immigration order took effect in June. Migrant apprehensions at the border have fallen 77% from their height in December 2023, according to a BBC article citing Border Patrol data.

Biden’s order instituted conservative reforms, written and supported by congressional Republicans until Trump urged them to kill the legislation out of concern that allowing Democrats to fix the border crisis would weaken his campaign to return to the White House.

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Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.

Louisiana struggles to buy new voting machines after placating election deniers

A voting systems law the Louisiana Legislature enacted three years ago to placate right-wing election deniers has made the task of buying voting machines so burdensome that lawmakers are now repealing parts of it.

House Bill 856, sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, would repeal requirements that the secretary of state use the state’s Administrative Procedure Act to purchase new machines and contract with at least three independent experts to certify the machines, among other stipulations in the law.

The bill, which is pending a final concurrence vote in the House, sailed through both chambers without opposition, though the most significant parts of the legislation were only recently added through an amendment adopted Thursday on the Senate floor.

The proposal repeals parts of a statute lawmakers passed in 2021, Act 480, which created the Voting System Commission within the Louisiana Department of State. Comprised of government officials who serve without compensation, the commission is charged with analyzing any available voting systems and recommending a specific type to the secretary of state.

The 2021 law also created a separate Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee to independently review vendors that submitted bids before making a final recommendation.

Joel Watson, spokesperson for Secretary of State Nancy Landry, said the process involves multiple layers of bureaucratic red tape that will delay the purchase of new voting machines by an additional two years.

“No other agency has to go through this kind of process,” Watson said.

Johnson’s bill would retain the Voting System Commission and the Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee with some small changes. But it repeals requirements that the secretary of state create rules under the Administrative Procedure Act for the purchase of any voting systems and hire at least three independent experts to certify the machines.

Secretary of state wants absentee ballot restrictions, despite lack of voter fraud

“We didn’t want to take away these parts of the bill geared toward transparency,” Watson said. “We just didn’t want to have to go through a massive two-year-extra process … The system we have now is far too old to go through a process that would add two additional years.”

The state’s current voting machines are almost 35 years old and have become difficult and costly to repair because parts are no longer made for such outdated systems. If Johnson’s bill becomes law, it will take an estimated three years to acquire new systems as opposed to five, Watson said.

Lawmakers created the Voting System Commission and all the other sweeping requirements under pressure from a small group of Trump supporters who went to the State Capitol several times during the 2021 legislative session and bogged down committee hearings with far-fetched election conspiracy theories involving the 2020 presidential election. They offered no actual evidence to support what they alleged, but some Republican lawmakers embraced the lies.

Many of the baseless claims were about Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine vendor that many Trump supporters falsely accused of rigging the election.

In 2023, Dominion won a nearly $800 million settlement against Fox News, which spread some of the conspiracy theories. Court filings, as detailed in the New York Times, exposed scores of embarrassing internal emails and text messages showing Fox’s biggest TV personalities and executives collaborating with top GOP operatives and knowingly repeating lies on the air.

By that time, much of the damage caused by Trump’s “Big Lie” had already taken its toll. In 2021, Louisiana Republicans had forced then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, also a Republican, to cancel open bidding for new voting machines because they said the bid language was too favorable to Dominion.

When Landry attended a May 8 Senate committee hearing on the bill, Sen. Greg Miller, R-Norco, asked her for an update on the purchase of new voting machines. Landry was Ardoin’s first assistant secretary before replacing her former boss in January.

“It seems like forever we’ve been hearing about new voting machines,” Miller said. “I think really since before around 2015 or so.”

Landry said it’s her “number one priority” but told Miller the 2021 law has turned it into a “long and drawn out process.”

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Louisiana lawmakers want ‘In God We Trust’ signs in every classroom

One of the first bills filed ahead of Louisiana’s 2023 legislative Session would require all public schools and universities to put a new sign in every classroom: “In God We Trust.”

House Bill 8, cosponsored by Republican Reps. Dodie Horton of Houghton and Jack McFarland of Jonesboro, was among the first handful of bills published on the legislature’s website as prefiling opened this week.

The proposal would require all public elementary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions in Louisiana to display “In God We Trust” in every classroom. Each individual school system governing authority, such as a parish school board, would be able to determine the design of the display with a minimum requirement of a paper sign.

It would allow school systems to purchase the signs with their own money or with donations. Schools could also accept donated signs.

The proposal would amend an existing statute that requires schools to display the motto in every building and teach fifth-graders about it and other “patriotic customs,” such as how to properly display an American flag.

In a phone interview Friday, McFarland said putting the signs in every classroom would be an effective way to invite healthy discussion on the history of the motto.

The phrase “In God We Trust” first appeared on the 2-cent coin in 1864. President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation to adopt it as the national motto in 1956, and it was placed on paper currency in 1957.

McFarland said he was inspired to file the bill after seeing the nation unite in support for Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who suffered a heart attack on the field during a Jan. 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

“That was a defining moment for a lot of people,” he said. “The game just completely stopped and everybody put everything to the side …

“I just think there are certain things in this country we can all get behind… Why would we not want to teach our children about the national motto?”

McFarland said he’s aware some groups might claim the measure would violate the doctrine of separation of church and state, but he said it wouldn’t force a particular religion on anyone.

“Every religion identifies some type of god, whether in the Bible or Quran,” he said. “I’m just asking them to believe in our national motto that’s good enough to be printed on our currency. Why can it not be displayed in our classroom?”

The 2023 legislative session begins April 10.

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Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

Anatomy of a 'cover up': Coroners’ records missing on unarmed Louisiana Black man's death

Questioning coroners and a paramedic, Louisiana lawmakers on the special committee investigating the Ronald Greene case learned some new details about the 49-year-old’s death in Louisiana State Police custody. But critical testimony fell short as the coroners deferred questions to others not in attendance and said official records in the case are missing.

Answering questions committee member Rep. Tony Bacala posed, paramedic Cindy Ott said Greene had no signs of life when the ambulance arrived on the scene to transport him to Glenwood Regional Medical Center in West Monroe, casting doubt on the State Police narrative that Greene was still alive and died on his way to the hospital.

“He was apneic, and I could not find a pulse,” Ott said, using the medical term for not breathing.

Ott confirmed Greene’s fractured breastbone and ruptured aorta are “indicative of CPR.” The FBI reached the same conclusion in its addendum to the original autopsy report that blamed those injuries on Green crashing his car into a tree at the end of a state police pursuit. Ott said it’s not unusual for chest compressions to cause those injuries and others, such as a lacerated liver or punctured lung.

Ott said Greene had stun gun probes still in his body, head lacerations, blood covering his face and head and tree bark in his hairline.

“We removed Taser probes from the left chest wall, left wrist, as well as the left lower back,” Ott said.

The radio call that dispatched emergency medical services described the incident as a traffic accident, Ott said.

The Associated Press later revealed state troopers omitted from their incident report how they used stun guns and beat, choked, dragged and restrained Greene face down for nine minutes before he stopped breathing, all of which was captured on police body-camera video that they refused to release to the public for nearly two years.

Ott said state troopers refused to remove Greene’s handcuffs to allow medics to perform CPR to try to revive Greene and instead handcuffed him to the gurney. CPR efforts eventually stopped at the hospital, Ott said.

Coroner’s officials from Union and Ouachita parishes also testified before the committee Thursday. Angie Hollis, an investigator with the Ouachita Parish Coroner’s Office, was the first to respond to the hospital. Hollis said she then transferred the case to Union Parish because the incident occurred there, but she could not recall whether she wrote a report to document the transfer.

The Union Parish coroner at the time was Abbie Moon, who left office the following year and did not attend Thursday’s hearing. Moon was arrested in March on 21 counts of obtaining narcotics by fraud, according to a report in the Ruston Daily Leader.

Critical testimony could be out of reach for Ronald Greene committee

Renee Smith, the current Union Parish coroner, attended Thursday’s hearing and had little information to give lawmakers other than the records left with the office when she took over.

Reading from the autopsy report, Smith said Greene’s cause of death was cocaine-induced agitated delirium complicated by the car wreck, head injuries, physical struggle and restraint. Smith, like Moon, is neither a pathologist nor a physician, the only two medical professionals allowed to perform autopsies in Louisiana. Greene’s autopsy was outsourced to pathologists in Little Rock, Arkansas: Drs. Frank Peretti and Jennifer Forsyth.

“Agitated delirium,” also known as “excited delirium,” is generally defined as being in a highly agitated or combative state. It is a controversial diagnosis the American Medical Association and most other national and international medical organizations have rejected because it has no clear diagnostic criteria and is a “sole justification for law enforcement use of excessive force.”

Smith also claimed to have no knowledge that the FBI performed a review of the initial autopsy that excluded agitated delirium and the car wreck as causes of death. The information has circulated widely in local and national news since November.

Rep. Mandie Landry asked Ouachita Parish Coroner Dr. Teri O’Neal how common it is to attribute a death to agitated delirium. O’Neal acknowledged it is a controversial term she has used several times in reports, usually when quoting the pathologist who performed an autopsy.

O’Neal, who said she has not watched any of the body-camera videos of troopers beating Greene, described the symptoms of agitated delirium as rapid heart rate, sweating, muscle tension, combativeness, altered mental state and altered awareness. Lawmakers tried to determine who witnessed Greene’s condition and shared those symptoms with the pathologist. None of the officials from the coroners’ offices had answers.

O’Neal said it was “highly unusual” that her office had no reports, notes or any other records of Greene’s death. The only record that the former Union Parish coroner wrote contained a basic description of a traffic accident with no mention of symptoms that would indicate agitated delirium or a violent struggle, according to a copy read aloud during the committee meeting.

“So much around this case we are finding a pattern of something being uncommon, something being unusual … There are so many things that are just out of practice with this case that I just find it disturbing,” committee member Rep. Edmond Jordan said.

O’Neal said she plans to request an audit from an outside agency to see if any reports might have been created and subsequently lost or deleted.

After reviewing a copy of the pathology report, a passage was read aloud to the committee that indicated the pathologist had received information verbally from state troopers, but there was no communication or written records from paramedics on the scene.

Jordan also pointed out state law prohibits coroners from issuing a cremation permit when suspicious circumstances surround a death. Under questioning, the coroners said they would have not issued a cremation permit for Greene’s body, which Moon, the former Union Parish coroner, did.

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Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

Disabled people face GOP pushback in bid to study voting access

A proposal to study the voting rights of disabled people to see if improved wheelchair access and other accommodations might be needed encountered heavy pushback from several Louisiana House Republicans on Tuesday. The proposal ultimately advanced from the House and Governmental Affairs Committee after GOP lawmakers removed language that specified “curbside voting” for disabled people as one of the topics that would be studied.

House Concurrent Resolution 14, sponsored by Rep. Matthew Willard, D-New Orleans, does not propose any new laws or any changes to existing laws. It is what legislators refer to as a study resolution, a way of gaining nonpartisan recommendations on any particular issue by assembling a subcommittee or task force typically comprised of a combination of public and private sector experts, government officials and residents or members of the community most affected by the issue.

Louisiana Lawmakers support police study – as long as it doesn’t talk about George Floyd

It is a process that often requires task force members to meet multiple times and gather data over a period of several months. Their recommendations have no legal weight and, if accepted, still need to be included in legislation that lawmakers would debate and vote on. For these reasons, study resolutions are common during a legislative session and often do not encounter the level of opposition one might see with a regular bill, though some have in the past.

Willard’s resolution would assemble a task force to study the voting rights of disabled people, including the amenities and procedures currently available in Louisiana and any impediments that might exist to voting.

The 11-member task force would have at least four representatives from the disabilities community and be chaired by the Louisiana Secretary of State with a Feb. 1, 2023, deadline to complete its work and submit a report of its findings to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Willard said he introduced the legislation after some of his disabled constituents told him that they still face many different challenges with voting. He thought the best way to do that would be to give the disabled communities a “seat at the table” and allow them to directly shape the legislation.

Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, questioning the need for the resolution, said polling places in her area are accessible to disabled people and pointed out that she has a family member “very near and dear” to her who is disabled.

“What we already do now, to me, seems to be most efficient,” Horton said. “And if someone goes to a polling place that’s not, all they have to do is call their clerk of court, and I assure you that accommodations will be made.”

Responding to Horton’s comments, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin pointed out that a system of voting that makes disabled people rely on personal assistance does not offer the anonymity that is constitutionally guaranteed and afforded to everyone else through the secret ballot. He said anonymity and independence were some of the main concerns disabled people voiced at recent Voting System Commission meetings.

“They would like as many options as possible to be able to vote independently and not have to have assistance at the polling places,” Ardoin, a Republican, said. “To my understanding, I think that is why they’re asking us to do this study.”

Rep. Polly Thomas, R-Metairie, asked Willard for specific locations of polling places that are not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or where disabled people were denied the right to vote. Willard said the whole point of the legislation is to answer those questions.

Ardoin said his office has received complaints about disability access at a particular polling location in New Orleans. He said he is working with local officials to improve those accommodations.

Wheelchair ramps serve only a fraction of the disabled population. In addition to mobility disabilities, other conditions that can severely impede one’s ability to vote include vision loss, hearing loss, chronic illnesses, cognitive impairments, neurological disorders and conditions impairing one’s ability for self-care and independent living.

According to the 2021 Disability Statistics Compendium, which compiles data from several federal sources, the Census Bureau estimates Louisiana has more than 700,000 residents with a disability that causes serious impairment and, out of all states, has the highest percentage (23%) of individuals with a vision disability — meaning they are blind or have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses. Those numbers do not include people in institutions such as jails and nursing homes.

The Centers for Disease Control puts Louisiana’s disabled population higher, at about 1.1 million.

Approximately 270,000 disabled people in Louisiana voted in the 2020 election and an estimated 643,000 are currently eligible to vote, according to Rutgers University’s Program on Disability Research.

Thomas said she is a special educator and feels the current system’s medical allowance for an absentee mail-in ballot is “not burdensome” and is “quite easy and fast” for disabled people. “And you’re telling me differently?” she asked.

Willard said he would never presume to know what it actually is like for any disabled person and is proposing the resolution so that lawmakers can hear directly from those with disabilities.

Thomas repeated what Horton said earlier, recommending that Willard’s constituents call an election official if they have difficulties on voting day.

Also questioning the need for the study, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, expressed concern that the task force could recommend curbside voting or ballot drop-boxes and said the study “could be opening it up to more than just an ADA issue.”

“When you use the term disability, now all of a sudden we’re going to have somebody who’s, I don’t know, got some mild depression that’s fallen into this category,” Beaullieu said. “Can it open up to other things is more what I worry about when you start going down this task force deal.”

Rep. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, said he didn’t expect a study resolution to draw so much debate and told his colleagues they should want to make informed decisions.

“I just think as a general policy matter we should never be opposed to the idea of studying something to be more informed about any subject matter even if we’re afraid of what the study might reveal — period,” Duplessis said.

He said that when the subject of disabilities comes up, people who are not disabled often mention that they have a friend or family member who is disabled and tend to believe such a connection makes them especially empathetic to the wider disabled community.

“We may say we care about people who have disabilities, etcetera, but the reality is that many times we don’t understand or know the full extent of what a disability truly even is,” Duplessis said. “So sometimes we are all at fault for assuming that a disability is just someone who is limited to a wheelchair or a disability is someone who is just blind.”

With partisan lines taking shape among the committee members, Ardoin said the source of all the “angst” was a clause in the resolution that explicitly identified curbside voting as one of the possible solutions that should be studied. Thus, with Willard’s permission, chairman Rep. John Stefanski, R-Crowley, introduced an amendment that removed that clause, leaving the resolution silent as to which solutions the task force should study.

Stefanski’s motion quelled the debate, allowing HCR 14 to advance without objection. It will next head to the House floor.

A concurrent resolution does not require the governor’s approval.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

Anti-abortion group opposes giving adopted people access to birth certificates

A committee of Louisiana lawmakers will take another week to decide whether to advance a bill that would allow adopted people to obtain copies of their original birth certificates once they reach age 24.

State law currently provides adopted individuals only limited access to the information from their birth records, mostly connected to vital health data. The author of the bill, Rep. Charles Owen, R-Rosepine, voluntarily deferred the legislation Tuesday after a morning of emotional testimony in the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure from adoptees and adoptive parents in support of the bill and an anti-abortion group that opposes it.

Owen, who was adopted as a baby, told the Illuminator he was 35 when his biological mother located and contacted him for the first time. Despite this, he said he still is unable to obtain his birth certificate from the state.

Tuesday’s committee hearing prompted a variety of difficult questions regarding the equal protection of citizens under the law, whether the right to privacy means the right to anonymity, and to whom do birth certificates belong.

House Bill 450 proposes that a person who was adopted as a child would no longer have to petition a court to unseal their original birth certificate. Instead, they could obtain an uncertified copy upon request from the state registrar of vital records.

One’s ability to access their own vital records might seem like a fundamental right of every American citizen, but that’s not the case in Louisiana, adoptive mother Tyler Koch said.

In a closed adoption under Louisiana law, nearly all records, including the original birth certificate that often contains the identities of the biological parents, are sealed and not accessible to the adoptee. The state issues an altered birth certificate with the legal fiction that the child was born to its adoptive parents. The original can only be unsealed with a court order after the adoptee proves a compelling reason to make the records available.

In line with most research on the topic, several who testified at the meeting said the antiquated laws that sealed the birth certificates were written primarily because of the social stigma once attached to adoption.

“Chuck [Owen] and I used to be branded as ‘illegitimate,’” said LeRoy Lambert, a lawyer and former adoptee who spoke in support of the bill. “Any purported need for confidentiality makes a host of assumptions about the way things work.”

Lambert pointed out that access to consumer DNA testing is inexpensive and widespread through websites such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com. It allows nearly anyone to trace a person’s genealogy and track down their biological family members even if those family members do not use the websites. Law enforcement authorities have used consumer genealogy websites to track down criminals whose identities were unknown for decades, such as the Golden State Killer.

Lambert said the process of a closed adoption is a contract between the birth mother and the state. The privacy afforded by the contract might benefit both parties at the time, but it should not be allowed to infringe upon the rights of the adoptee once they become an adult, he said.

Were promises made?

Speaking against the legislation, anti-abortion advocate Ben Clapper with Louisiana Right to Life said a birth mother’s right to privacy in an adoption is essential to keeping adoption a welcome alternative to abortion.

Clapper said no birth parents could come to speak against the bill because “their story is a confidential story.” When asked by lawmakers, Clapper said there is no research or data to suggest that the disclosure of birth records has any effect on adoption rates.

In 1977, the Louisiana Legislature approved a law that recognizes a birth mother’s right to privacy in an adoption. Clapper said the state should not go back on the promise it has been giving to birth mothers for 45 years.

Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, pointed out that the four people who testified in support of the bill were all born prior to 1977 yet are still being denied their birth certificates even though the privacy law was not in effect when they were adopted.

“So if that confidentiality was not in the law at the time, we’re not breaking any deal or contract or agreement that was entered into at that time,” Seabaugh said.

In a post-meeting interview, adoptee Kenny Tucker of Arabi said it’s somewhat misleading to claim that birth mothers were promised that they would never be identified, and it would be irresponsible if any adoption agencies actually made such promises, he said.

In a closed adoption, the birth parents have little to no contact with or knowledge of the adoptive parents. Birth parents sign away all rights to the child, and the child is then placed with a prospective family through either an adoption agency, a private attorney or the foster care system.

The adoption is finalized only after the child has been living in the adoptive parents’ home for some time and after various state requirements, such as post-placement home visits, have been satisfied. It is only at that point, when the adoption is finalized, that an amended birth certificate is issued, Tucker said.

However, when birth parents relinquish their rights to a child for an adoption, it’s not guaranteed the adoption will be finalized and thus not guaranteed the original birth certificate will be sealed and replaced with an amended one, Tucker said. In those cases when a child remains a ward of the state until they are an adult, they receive the only birth certificate they have — the original one. He said opponents of the bill sometimes don’t understand this and often confuse privacy with anonymity.

“A right to privacy is not the same as a right to anonymity,” Tucker said, adding that an adoptee’s access to a birth certificate does not diminish the birth mother’s privacy. The birth certificate and adoption records would still be sealed to the general public, and all parties can still choose whether to live privately without contact among one another, he said.

Seeking compromise

During his opening presentation of the bill Tuesday, Owen said he would work with all sides in an effort to reach some level of agreement on the legislation.

The anti-abortion group proposed an amendment that would require the birth mother to submit an affidavit agreeing to the disclosure of the birth certificate unless the birth mother is deceased, in which case the record would be released. But Tucker said a person’s ability to access their own vital records should be the default.

“To whom does a birth certificate belong?” Tucker said.

In a conversation with Owen after the meeting, Tucker proposed the idea of allowing birth parents to select a “do not contact” option whenever an adoptee requests their original birth certificate. This would allow birth parents to maintain their privacy while also giving adoptees the birth certificate and the true life history they have always longed for, Tucker said.

Many states have some variation of laws that allow an adoptee to obtain their original birth certificate either immediately upon request or if the birth mother has not objected to the disclosure via an affidavit. According to the U.S. Children’s Bureau, those states are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and the Virgin Islands.

The committee is expected to reconsider the bill when it meets again next Tuesday.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

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Court rules against unvaccinated students at Louisiana medical school

Three students who sued a Monroe medical school over its coronavirus vaccine mandate lost their motion to hold the college in contempt. The ruling, issued Friday, means a settlement from October will remain in place.

Rachel Lynn Magliulo, Matthew Shea Willis and Kirsten Willis Hall initially sued the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) in Monroe in August because they did not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in accordance with the medical school’s policy. They alleged VCOM discriminated against them, took other actions that humiliated them in front of their classmates and restricted them from attending certain classes.

VCOM is a private college that leases space on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

In October, the students reached a non-monetary settlement with VCOM but asked to reopen the case less than a month later, claiming the school instituted new practices they considered discriminatory such as requiring unvaccinated people to wear face masks indoors.

The medical school had updated its COVID-19 protocols, which differed between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals but followed the guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty on Friday denied the students’ motion for contempt and their motion to enforce the consent judgment, ruling that VCOM’s updated policies don’t restrict the students from doing the same things that vaccinated students can do.

Doughty wrote that the updated restrictions still allow the students to be unvaccinated, attend classes and complete their academic work. He also pointed out that the consent decree provided that the plaintiffs would be subject to “reasonable safety measures” as promulgated by the CDC for unvaccinated people and institutions of higher education.

Osteopathy is a field of medicine that emphasizes a whole-person approach to treatment and tends to focus more on physical therapies for the body than drugs or invasive treatments. Graduates from an osteopathic medical school receive a D.O. degree rather than the traditional M.D. carried by most physicians but can still prescribe medicines and perform surgeries.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

An expert on police use of force is calling this incident one of the 'most abusive and unnecessary' he has ever seen

One of the nation’s leading experts in police procedure told the Hammond City Council on Tuesday that video of white police officers subduing a handcuffed Black man inside the department’s booking room is “one of the most abusive uses of force” he has ever investigated.

Council members have renewed talk of calling on Hammond’s mayor to fire Police Chief Edwin Bergeron, who was a sergeant at the time and one of the officers in the video. The FBI was reportedly referred the incident that followed the Dec. 6, 2017, arrest of Kentdrick Ratliff for obstructing a sidewalk, but the status of that remains unclear. Officers found a bottle of pills in Ratliff’s car, which he later said was prescription medication to treat his anxiety.

The city council heard a summary of findings Tuesday from an investigation they pursued 16 months ago after the Hammond Police Department’s internal affairs department and Mayor Pete Panepinto refused to hold the officers accountable. A Baton Rouge law firm was hired to look into the case, and it brought in Seth Stoughton, an attorney and former police officer who teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

A specialist in police procedure and criminal law, Stoughton has testified in state and federal courts across the country as a police use-of-force expert, most recently as a prosecution expert in the 2021 trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was ultimately convicted for killing George Floyd.

Stoughton attended Tuesday’s council meeting in person to present his findings, which included his conclusions on 10 uses of force against Ratliff.

Read Professor Seth Stoughton’s full report on the Hammond police incident

While sitting handcuffed next to a desk in the booking room, Ratliff suddenly reached for the pill bottle that was left unsecured on the desk, sparking an immediate response from the two officers in the room, Bergeron and Craig Dunn.

Bergeron did not respond to the Illuminator’s attempts to reach him for comment.

Of the 10 uses of force seen in the video, Stoughton said only two were reasonable in light of the circumstances. He deemed the remaining eight “unreasonable and excessive,” with up to four “egregiously unreasonable and excessive” actions that could constitute criminal acts.

One of the worst, Stoughton said, occurred at the end of the incident when Dunn stomped Ratliff’s face five times while Ratliff was lying on his side with his hands cuffed behind him.

“This is egregiously unreasonable,” Stoughton said. “It is among the most abusive uses of force I’ve seen in reviewing I can’t even tell you how many cases.”

This same language is repeated in Stoughton’s 158-page investigative report when describing Dunn’s actions.

“Dunn’s stomping on or kicking Mr. Ratliff in the face five times while he was handcuffed and laying on his side, fully under the control of officers, ranks among the most abusive and unnecessary uses of force that I have ever reviewed.”

Uses of force detailed

Policing expert Seth Stoughton said Hammond police officers employed the following uses of force, listed in chronological order during suspect Kentdrick Ratliff’s booking in December 2017 at the police station:

Then-Sgt. Edwin Bergeron and Officer Craig Dunn Nine delivered nine closed-fist punches to Ratliff’s face and body while Ratliff was handcuffed lying face-up on top of the desk, leading him to fall through the desk to the ground.
Dunn kicked Ratliff in the neck.
Dunn placed Ratliff in a “guillotine” choke hold after one of the handcuffs came off Ratliff’s right wrist. Such a choke hold is considered in policing as an “application of deadly force,” Stoughton said.
Bergeron struck Ratliff in the torso with a knee while Dunn held Ratliff, deemed reasonable.
Officer Storm Tabor shocked Ratliff in the back and leg multiple times with a stun gun, deemed reasonable.
Ratliff was kept in a prone position for a prolonged period of time after being resecured in handcuffs.
An officer, believed to be Dunn, knelt on Ratliff’s neck while the suspect lay prone and handcuffed.
Officer Thaddeus Gautier employed a “gooseneck” wristlock, a pain compliance technique, while Ratliff was handcuffed and prone with his arms elevated behind his back.
Sgt. Thomas Mushinsky kicked Ratliff in either the groin or thigh long after he was secured with handcuffs and under the control of two officers.
Dunn stomped or kicked Ratliff’s face five times while he was handcuffed.

Ratliff was then taken to a hospital for medical treatment. His medical records reflected a facial laceration, missing teeth, blood on his face and a wound to his back.

Stoughton recommended the city council refer the matter to law enforcement for potential criminal prosecution of the officers. Another significant recommendation was to hire an outside firm to conduct a comprehensive review of the Hammond Police Department and its operations.

Stoughton also noted that written reports from officers involved in the Ratliff incident omitted most of their use of force actions. One officer testified that Bergeron instructed him to not file a report, even though department policy and general practice required him to do so.

An internal affairs investigation Mayor Panepinto ordered looked only into whether Sgt. Mushinsky kicked Ratliff in the groin or thigh. None of the other officers were investigated, according to documents the Illuminator obtained.

After receiving those key findings Tuesday, several council members moved to amend the meeting’s agenda to add a resolution to request the mayor fire the police chief. The motion required a unanimous vote, and council members Carlee Gonzales and Steven Leon opposed it.

“When you do something like this, you’re leaving the citizenship entirely out of the loop,” Leon said, explaining his opposition to the motion.

Council members indicated they would bring the resolution in the near future. The council approved an identical resolution in September 2020, prior to Stoughton’s investigation. Gonzales and Leon voted against it..

“Watching that video, there really shouldn’t be much more to see,” Councilman Sam DiVittorio said. “That video, it was disturbing and disgusting.”

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

IN OTHER NEWS: Congresswoman's car struck by bullets — but she wasn't inside

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Gen. Honoré plans to confront oil companies over neglecting infrastructure in Louisiana

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré plans to attend a meeting of the Petroleum Club of Lafayette next week to demand that oil corporations — not taxpayers — pay the half-billion dollar bill that could result from having to clean up the thousands of oil spills and other incidents of pollution in Louisiana exposed by Hurricane Ida, according to a Friday press release.

Honoré, an emergency preparedness expert known for leading the recovery of Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. Capitol security review in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, will attend the Petroleum Club meeting at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 5, at 1030 E. Saint Mary Blvd., Lafayette.

According to his press release, the general will demand the industry foot the bill that could cost up to $650 million to properly plug all 4,600 abandoned wells across the state of Louisiana. The news release said the thousands of pollution incidents since Ida's landfall have exposed vulnerable and abandoned industrial infrastructure across the state.

Industrial and petrochemical pollution incidents in Louisiana have drawn heightened scrutiny after Associated Press journalists, combing through weather satellite images, spotted oil slicks near a Gulf of Mexico rig in the days following Hurricane Ida's Aug. 29 landfall. That oil spill, which left an 11-mile long slick, came from an abandoned pipeline that authorities have yet to trace to a company responsible.

Since then, the U.S. Coast Guard has received more than 2,100 reports of spills and other contamination incidents, according to a Washington Post article.

Among those reports, the Phillips 66 Alliance refinery, located along the Mississippi River in Belle Chasse, spilled an unreported amount of oil that killed several deer and cows and covered otters, hogs and at least 100 birds, according to NOLA.com.

Louisiana's industries also affected the air after the storm. Oil refineries, such as Shell Norco, released chemical emissions at a high rate in the days before and after Ida's landfall, forming a long black cloud that stretched from Norco to near the middle of Lake Pontchartrain north of Metairie where it began to dissipate.

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Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

Louisiana governor downplays State Police cover-up allegations in Ronald Greene case

In a radio interview Wednesday, Gov. John Bel Edwards downplayed reports that Louisiana State Police troopers engaged in an attempted cover-up of the 2019 death of Ronald Greene, saying many of the cover-up allegations are “overblown or just false."

“Sometimes the media is incomplete in the way it portrays things, and tends toward the sensational," Edwards said. “That is not to say that everything that has happened has been exactly right because it hasn't."

“I think there was excess brutality shown to Mr. Greene. There is just no reason for that," the governor said. “But the cover-up part of it, much of that is overblown or just false."

The governor was asked about the Greene case during his monthly call-in radio show, in which he answers questions from the public. Greene died in State Police custody following a car chase with troopers outside of Monroe.

Troopers said for over a year that the 49-year-old Black man died from injuries suffered in a car wreck, but the Associated Press split the case open when they obtained and published body-camera footage showing troopers beating, choking, and using a stun gun on Greene. The body camera footage also shows the troopers, who are White, spraying him in the face with pepper spray and dragging him by his leg shackles face down over pavement.

Since breaking that news, the AP has revealed other aspects of the case that call into question the State Police's handling of the case. In May the AP reported that the ranking trooper on the scene, Lt. John Clary, falsely told internal investigators that Greene was still a threat to flee after he was shackled, and Clary denied the existence of his own body camera video for nearly two years until it emerged last April.

In an internal affairs document obtained by the AP, a detective wrote that Clary's 30-minute-long body-camera footage does not show Greene resisting, trying to flee or even raising his voice. or trying to get away. It shows Greene “lying on the ground, face down, handcuffed behind his back, leg shackles on his ankles, uttering the phrases, 'I'm sorry', or 'I'm scared' or 'Yes sir' or 'Okay."

In his radio interview, Edwards described the way Greene was treated by officers as “really criminal," but pushed back repeatedly on notions that state troopers might have engaged in a widespread coverup of the incident.

“Part of the things that are being called a coverup really are not," Edwards said. “For example, the district attorney and the U.S. Department of Justice asked that the videos in the Ronald Greene matter not be shown to the public. It would compromise the investigation that they're doing and potentially adversely impact a decision whether to prosecute. So if you have that from the DA and the U.S. DOJ, then you don't go out and show the video to the public. But by not showing the video to the public you get accused that you're trying to cover it up."

Earlier this year, Edwards allowed Greene's family and members of the Legislative Black Caucus to view some of the footage privately. Since then many of the videos the state has released came only after the AP obtained and published them.

Edwards said the investigation is still working to determine Greene's cause of death. The statements made by troopers that Greene died from injuries suffered in a car wreck have yet to be proven false, he said.

“The issue would be did he die from injuries sustained in the accident?" Edwards said. “Obviously he didn't die in the accident itself because he was still alive when the troopers were engaging with him. But what was the cause of death? I don't know that that was falsely portrayed."

Federal authorities have taken the unusual step of ordering a new autopsy of Greene, but the original autopsy of his body was inconclusive about whether his most severe injuries were caused by a car crash or being repeatedly hit by the troopers, according to the Associated Press.

Since the news reports of the case broke in 2019, the FBI has launched a civil rights investigation and the U.S. Justice Department is looking into whether State Police leaders obstructed justice.

In an interview with the Illuminator, Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Louisiana police watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, said the governor is not privy to the details of those inquiries.

“The information that he is getting is probably coming from the State Police, which is the subject of the investigation," Goyeneche said. “My advice to the public is to take what the governor is saying with a few grains of salt."

State Rep. Ted James (D-Baton Rouge), who serves as chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus — a close ally of Edwards — said he was disappointed to hear the governor downplayed a cover-up in the case.

“It's clear everywhere else across the state that the State Police did everything to try to conceal and hide the truth," James said.

James said the cover-up allegations didn't just arise when the agency withheld videos from the public. Troopers told Greene's family that he died on impact in the wreck, concealed body-camera footage and lied to internal affairs investigators, he said.

In an attempt to regain public trust in the agency, State Police Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis held a press conference last week to highlight some police reforms.

But James said he has zero confidence in the agency.

“I'm very disappointed that the governor doesn't see this as a cover-up," James said. “Ray Charles could have seen this is a cover-up. It's glaring."

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Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

Anti-vaccine students complain that they feel belittled by Louisiana medical school

The three students who are suing a north Louisiana medical school over its COVID-19 vaccination policy filed a new motion Monday alleging a college administrator belittled them in an email last week in an attempt to “turn the student body against them."

This article was originally published at the Louisiana Illuminator

The students, Rachel Lynn Magliulo, Matthew Shea Willis and Kirsten Willis Hall, filed a motion for contempt against the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) — a private college that leases land on the campus of the University of Louisiana-Monroe.

The motion for contempt comes less than a week after Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court in Monroe granted a temporary restraining order that prohibited the medical school from mandating the students receive a coronavirus vaccination as a condition of enrollment or partaking in certain training.

The students say VCOM Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Nathan Kinnard sent a “passive aggressive" email to the entire college that called Louisiana's school vaccination laws “antiquated" and belittled the three unvaccinated students, though the email did not refer to the students by name.

According to the email, Kinnard began by writing that he wanted to dispel rumors that have been circulating about the ongoing litigation. He wrote that Louisiana's low vaccination rate has rendered some clinical training courses unsafe.

“Unfortunately, we are facing a dilemma: Louisiana has one of the highest numbers of new cases of Covid-19 and one of the lowest vaccination rates, the situation does not provide for a safe clinical experience for students who are not vaccinated or for patients," Kinnard wrote. “We would simply not be able to protect the potential patients or any unvaccinated students and so we were forced to cancel these."

Michael L. DuBos, who is representing the students, argues in the motion that Kinnard's email blamed the three unvaccinated students for the college being forced to cancel two blocks of clinical training.

Kinnard also referred directly to the lawsuit in his email, writing that the medical school — which has a main campus in Virginia and just opened its satellite college in Monroe last year — was initially unaware Louisiana had “such an antiquated law" on student vaccinations. Kinnard said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry's office and Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing the students, did not contact VCOM before filing the lawsuit or sending any letters.

“There are those who wish to make this a political issue rather than a public health issue it is," Kinnard wrote.

Kinnard also discouraged any “unprofessional conduct" toward the unvaccinated students, writing that such conduct is against school policy.

VCOM administrators issued a statement to the Illuminator on Tuesday that read, in part: “VCOM is more concerned that the continued court filings, all of which identify these students by name and are then provided to the media by their legal counsel, continuously separate these students from their classmates."

VCOM said student officers had asked Kinnard to write the email to dispel rumors and ensure that any retaliation against the unvaccinated students would not be tolerated.

“The reason the early clinical experiences were cancelled was to ensure that elderly patients would not be exposed to potential carriers of the virus," the VCOM statement read. “As research shows that even vaccinated individuals have the potential to be carriers of the virus, nothing in the email was retaliatory."

The medical school also said the “antiquated law" comment was made in reference to a statute that had been in effect for some time but had no case law associated with it and that the term was not a creation of Kinnard's.

VCOM had granted the students exemptions to its vaccine mandate on Aug. 6, just days after the students filed their initial lawsuit Aug. 4.

In last week's ruling, Doughty wrote that VCOM placed “excessive" restrictions on the three unvaccinated students that included requiring them to disclose their unvaccinated status to classmates with whom they came into close contact and restricting them from participating in clinical training that is required in order to graduate.

In a phone call Tuesday, DuBos said Kinnard's email was “completely unnecessary," but he did not want to comment further.

VCOM's full response to the Illuminator:

VCOM has not and will not retaliate against the VCOM students. The allegations raised in this most recent filing lack merit. VCOM granted the student waivers to the vaccine on 8/6/2021.

The Associate Dean for Student Affairs frequently emails the student body on matters of concern related to the student body. He was asked by student officers to dispel rumors and to ensure all students were aware that any type of retaliation against the students would not be tolerated. The email clearly addressed this. In addition, the email addressed other questions the Associate Dean had been asked to address, including why international rotations were cancelled and why the early clinical experiences had been canceled. The reason international experiences were cancelled was the rising number of cases in the countries where these occur. The reason the early clinical experiences were cancelled was to ensure that elderly patients would not be exposed to potential carriers of the virus. As research shows that even vaccinated individuals have the potential to be carriers of the virus, nothing in the email was retaliatory.

VCOM is more concerned that the continued court filings, all of which identify these students by name and are then provided to the media by their legal counsel, continuously separate these students from their classmates.

There was no reason for this filing. In fact, to justify it, legal counsel referred to conversations alleged to have occurred in July (prior to the complaint), many of which have been mischaracterized, and none of which would apply to the order today.

The references to LSU in this memo are obviously an effort to alienate VCOM from its peer institutions. VCOM administration has met with LSU medical school administration many times and have a positive relationship. VCOM holds the LSU medical school in high regard, and the allegations are just an attempt by the students' attorneys to separate VCOM from the other medical schools within the state, all of which support vaccination.

The reference regarding the “antiquated law" was made in reference to “a law that had been in effect for some time but where no actual case could be identified where such law had been applied." The term had been used in conversation on campus and was not a creation of Mr. Kinnard.

VCOM continues to abide by the terms of the temporary restraining order.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.