ACLU OF LOUISIANA STATEMENT ON CROCKETT V. STATE OF LOUISIANA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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NEW ORLEANS — Today, the Louisiana Supreme Court blessed a legislative coup. In Crockett v. State of Louisiana, a majority of the Court upheld Act 15 of the 2026 Regular Session, a law that abolished a duly elected office the day before Calvin Duncan could take his seat. Three justices dissented. We stand with them. The majority is wrong.

Calvin Duncan won the race for Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court with 68 percent of the vote. He is a Black man who spent nearly three decades wrongfully imprisoned, earned a law degree after his release, and won a democratic election by a landslide. Before he could take a single step into that office, Governor Landry and the Republican-controlled legislature abolished it. The bill’s own sponsor admitted on the floor that his purpose was to act, “before Mr. Duncan takes office.” This was not governance. This was targeted.

As Chief Justice Weimer wrote in dissent, the legislature’s action, “makes a mockery of the electoral process by completely obliterating the constitutional effectiveness of the people’s vote.” The dissenters were clear: while the legislature may have authority to abolish an office, it may only do so prospectively after an elected official has served the term to which they were elected. What happened to Calvin Duncan falls nowhere near that line.

Justice Griffin warned that today’s ruling, “allows the legislature to nullify the results of any election it disagrees with.” Justice Guidry identified an internal contradiction the majority refused to confront: Act 15 states the position must be filled by election, yet the legislature appointed someone without one. As Justice Guidry wrote, the court, “should have exercised its constitutional duty” to declare that inconsistency unconstitutional. Instead, the majority looked away.

Justice Guidry also condemned how this ruling was produced — no oral argument, no trial court ruling, no intermediate appellate review. A decision that nullified a democratic election and stripped a Black man of an office he won was handed down behind closed doors. As Justice Guidry wrote, the court’s role, “is not to blindly accommodate the sword, but instead is to be a shield to protect the rights of our citizens.”

Calvin Duncan is not the first Black Louisianan this administration has moved to push out of power in 2026. This same governor and legislature have gerrymandered Black voters out of congressional representation, secretly rewritten the state’s election code, cut Black judgeships in Orleans Parish, and now secured a ruling that lets them abolish an elected office rather than accept the choice of a majority-Black electorate. The pattern is plain. The intent is plain. The harm is plain.

The ACLU of Louisiana continues to represent Calvin Duncan in federal court. We stand with the voters of New Orleans who chose him. And we will not stop fighting until the courts of this state fulfill their constitutional obligation to be a shield, not an instrument of forces that seek to silence Black voters, erase Black officeholders, and consolidate power at any constitutional cost.