An unusual court order temporarily blocking the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from running for re-election this year was lifted July 13, clearing the way for John Weimer to formally enter the race during the July 20-22 qualifying period.
U.S. Judge John deGravelles of the Middle District of Louisiana authored the decision lifting a May 4 consent order that blocked all state Supreme Court elections indefinitely. The practical effect of the order, however, was to upend the scheduled election in the Sixth District, where Weimer is the only justice who is up for re-election in the current election cycle.
The potential election delay was put in place during litigation that originally unfolded in 2019, when the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP challenged the current high court districts as unfair to Black voters. Both the NAACP and the attorney general, representing the state in the lawsuit, agreed to the consent stay order.
“The stay which had been entered by consent of Jeff Landry, the attorney general, and the NAACP has been completely lifted, so Justice Weimer will qualify for re-election next week,” John W. Perry Jr., one of Weimer’s attorneys, told the Louisiana Record. “ .... And the election will go forward as scheduled in November. So the roadblock has been removed."
It remains unclear why Landry, a Republican, agreed to the order blocking the Sixth District election. Weimer, who is classified as a “soft Democrat” by the election website Ballotpedia, turns 68 this year, and Louisiana law precludes judges from running for re-election when they reach their 70th birthday.
“He's had a long, successful career,” Perry said. “... He was going to have the end of his career come to a dead stop potentially at the hands of the attorney general, who was engaged in pure unadulterated politics."
Consent decrees can allow parties to reach some kind of settlement, but redrawing state Supreme Court districts requires action by the state Legislature, and state lawmakers did not approve a measure to do so this year. In addition, three state Supreme Court elections have taken place since the NAACP lawsuit was filed, with no such consent order being agreed to by the parties.
The Sixth District remains politically competitive, with the voting population being 44% Democrat, 29% Republican and 27% independent, according to the Louisiana Free Enterprise Institute.
In the NAACP litigation, Weimer and several sheriffs, acting as private citizens in the Sixth District, filed to become intervenors before seeking to lift the consent stay.
“If the stay is not lifted, intervenor voters will indefinitely lose their right to vote for a Louisiana Supreme Court justice in their district, and (the) intervenor candidate must indefinitely postpone his candidacy, with the possibility that he will be unable to run in the future because of age limits,” Judge deGravelles wrote in his decision.