NEW ORLEANS — The Louisiana Supreme Court has upheld a new state law that reduces the number of Orleans Parish criminal court judges. The ruling overturns an earlier ruling by a Baton Rouge judge’s ending a month-long legal battle over the state law that the highest court ruled is constitutional.

In reversing that a previous trial court’s judgment that the new state law was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of Friday vacated the preliminary injunction against it and lifted the stay on the new law.

The law, signed by Governor Jeff Landry in June, reduces the Orleans Criminal Court bench from 12 judges to nine by eliminating the sections held by New Orleans Judges John Fuller, Simone Levine and Rhonda Goode-Douglas at the end of this year, when their current term expire.
The central legal question considered by the Supreme Court was whether the legislature needed a two-thirds supermajority vote to pass the law, which was green lit by legislators in June. The conference committee report received 25 votes in the 39-member Senate and 62 votes in the 105-member House.

The court concluded that the legislature had the power to make changes to those courts through an simple majority vote, rather than the two-thirds requirement.

Judge Fuller, who was elected in May for a seat he will hold through the year, filed the lawsuit on June 29 against the state of Louisiana, after the law was signed. In his lawsuit, Fuller argued that a supermajority vote requirement applied to Orleans Parish and that the law abolishing sections of the court had not received enough votes to pass.

A trial court agreed with Fuller on July 14, declaring the entire act "null and void"—saying that the state Constitution didn’t apply to criminal district courts—and issued a preliminary injunction. The Supreme Court stepped in on July 17, assuming supervisory jurisdiction and staying the lower court proceedings because of the compressed timeline ahead of election qualifying dates.

Friday, the Supreme Court's majority said the trial court's declaration went beyond what was permissible in a preliminary injunction hearing and that the order was over broad.

Three justices dissented from the decision: Chief Justice Weimer, Justice Piper Griffin and Justice John Guidry. The three justices each wrote separately, arguing that the section of the state Constitution in question applies to all judicial districts in the state, including those in Orleans Parish and that the act passed by the state legislature in the spring should have required a two-thirds vote to eliminate the three judge seats.

The majority noted that even after the new law takes effect, Orleans Parish will still have more judges than any other place in Louisiana, including neighboring Jefferson Parish, which has a larger population.