Stories by Michael Carroll on Louisiana Record

NEW ORLEANS – A move to standardize how education funds are divvied up among all New Orleans public schools has prompted a federal lawsuit alleging that the new formula will violate contracts between charter schools and the Orleans Parish School District, while depriving some schools of due process and equal protection under the law.

BATON ROUGE – A television reporter’s federal lawsuit alleging that he was illegally confined and his First Amendment rights trampled while at a crime scene in Baton Rouge last year could help foster better relations between police and the press, the legal defense director of a journalists’ advocacy group said on Thursday.

WINNFIELD – If you pay a visit the Louisiana Political Museum, you’ll see the vehicle the late Gov. Earl Long used for political campaigning and Gov. Huey P. Long’s ornate dining room set. But you can also take a gander at the roster of this year’s inductees into the museum’s Political Hall of Fame, including retired Lafayette Judge Kaliste Saloom Jr.

BATON ROUGE – The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may have been a blow to those who live by the principles of limited government and traditional values, but many local attorneys who share Scalia’s outlook continue to meet, discuss and promote those principles.

NEW ORLEANS – As the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week heard arguments in a lawsuit over alleged wetlands damage to the Louisiana coast by oil and natural gas companies, a watchdog group described the legal effort by a state flood protection authority as futile and a waste of money.

NEW ORLEANS — A lawsuit filed last week in federal court alleges that the Louisiana Judiciary Commission illegally disciplined a judge and denied the plaintiff due process rights.

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and other state officials scored a victory last week when a federal appeals court decided that new state restrictions on doctors who perform abortions may go forward, but a similar case that’s before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will likely bring the final word on the matter.

NEW ORLEANS – The budget-tightening move to relocate personnel in the Attorney General’s Office to unoccupied space in the Benson Tower building near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome will save the state more than $300,000 annually, but the one-time moving costs have yet to be tallied, state officials said this week.

The attorney who represents a northern Louisiana parish accused of racial bias for its handling of a water services project described the discrimination lawsuit filed last week in federal district court as both baseless and frivolous.

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana oil and gas companies lost a legal skirmish last week over a challenge to a flood protection authority’s use of private law firms, but the much larger issue of financial responsibility for coastal wetlands damage remains to be settled.

BATON ROUGE — For years John Baker, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University, told people that he feared his good friend, the energetic and hard-driven Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, might succumb one day as a result of the justice’s active lifestyle and vigorous commitment to his beliefs about the Constitution.