Provides for the election of judges of the first district of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal (OR +$264,125 SG EX See Note)

House Bill 369 amends Louisiana Revised Statutes 13:312(5)(b)(i) and 312.1(E)(2) to restructure the election sections for judges of the first district of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. The bill divides the first district, which comprises Jefferson Parish, from two existing election sections into three election sections. Election section one will contain the majority of the district's precincts, election section two will retain certain precincts from the existing structure with minor modifications, and the new election section three will comprise previously undesignated precincts including areas in the eastern and southeastern portions of the parish. Simultaneously, the bill reallocates judgeships among these sections: four judges shall be elected from election section one, one judge from election section two, and one judge from election section three, compared to the current structure of five judges from section one and one judge from section two.

The practical effect of this legislation is to create a new electoral district for one of the six appellate judges from Jefferson Parish. Voters in the precincts assigned to election section three will gain the ability to directly elect a judge from their geographic area, whereas those voters previously participated only in electing judges from the broader first district framework. The bill also establishes a transitional mechanism: the first vacancy occurring in a judgeship held by a judge elected from section one shall result in that position being assigned to section three for all future elections, unless no election is held to fill such a vacancy before the 2030 general election cycle, at which point the Division B judgeship shall automatically transfer to section three. This provision gradually converts the judicial representation structure rather than immediately implementing all changes at once.

This amendment operates within Louisiana's constitutional framework for judicial elections established in Article V of the Louisiana Constitution and existing appellate court statutes. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal was previously structured under R.S. 13:312 to comprise eight judges distributed across three districts covering Jefferson, St. Charles, St. James, and St. John the Baptist parishes. By amending both the district composition statute and the corresponding judges statute, the bill maintains consistency across the statutory scheme governing appellate court organization. The legislation includes provisions ensuring that precinct boundaries referenced in the statute conform to 2020 Census Redistricting data as validated by the Louisiana legislature, and it declares that district boundaries shall remain fixed regardless of future precinct changes made by parish authorities, thereby preventing erosion of the electoral arrangement through subsequent redistricting.