KEY TAKEAWAYS: Senate committee advances bill allowing removal of judges Proposal extends to Louisiana Supreme Court justices Legislature would hold trial requiring two-thirds Senate vote Constitutional amendment could go before voters in April 2027   A Louisiana senator is proposing a state constitutional amendment to allow legislators and the governor to remove judges from the bench, all the way up to justices on the Louisiana Supreme Court. A Senate judiciary committee voted 5-1 Tuesday in favor of Senate Bill 123, its first step in the legislative process. The proposal from Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, now heads to the full Senate for debate. Morris heavily reworked his bill before the vote. It no longer allows the governor and lawmakers to remove district attorneys, which Morris said he would not have been able to get enough legislators to support. Instead, the senator stretched his legislation to give state lawmakers and governor new leverage over the most powerful judges in the state. Morris’ original bill only covered lower court judges overseeing municipal, family, juvenile and district courts. “This bill is not going to miraculously make the judges who are not that great be awesome, but they will all be looking over their shoulder a little more,” Morris said at the committee hearing Tuesday. The bill says judges can only be removed for “gross misconduct, malfeasance or incompetence” but doesn’t include a definition for those words. Morris’ revised proposal also reconfigures the role of the governor in the judicial removal process from his original bill. Under the new version, the governor has to “certify” the removal of a judge after the legislature votes to force the person from their job. In the original bill, the governor initiated the removal process of a judge with a recommendation to the legislature. It’s unclear if the new version of the amendment gives the governor ultimate veto power over a judges’ removal. Morris’ rewritten measure doesn’t explain what happens if the governor doesn’t certify the legislature’s decision to remove a judge. It’s also not clear how the process to remove a judge would begin in the current version of the bill. It indicates a “legislative address” would be used to kick off the lawmakers’ deliberations, but a legislative address isn’t defined. According to the current bill, the Senate would hold a trial to remove a judge and need a two-thirds majority in favor of forcing the person off the bench. A simple majority of members in the House of Representatives would also need to be in favor of the removal before it was sent to the governor for certification. Morris said he intends to file a companion bill that iron out the details of how the full removal process would work. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature for approval before they can be placed in front of state voters. Morris wants the amendment to appear April 17, 2027, ballot. ...read more read less