Calvin Duncan, who was elected to New Orleans’ clerk of criminal court position, has resumed his federal lawsuit against Gov. Jeff Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill and the law that abolished his position.
Act 15 — also called the Landry Act — combines the Orleans Parish criminal and civil clerks of court and gives the position to the civil clerk. It was part of a 2026 legislative package aimed at cutting what supporters called waste in the Orleans Parish court system. Orleans is the only parish with separate civil and criminal courts.
After a legal back-and-forth over the constitutionality of the act — which included Duncan receiving a stay that allowed him to fulfill his duties, only to be removed by an appellate court ruling just hours into his first day — the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Act 15 in a 4-3 vote on June 1 and refused to rehear the issue.
“The right to vote … is undoubtedly sacrosanct, but it is a right granted to our voters, not a mechanism to preserve offices for their elected occupants,” the majority wrote.
In a press release, Murrill applauded the Supreme Court’s decision, saying the majority “got this right.”
Attorneys for Duncan filed a petition in federal court in April, alleging that the law abolishing his position is unconstitutional because it removes an elected position; Duncan won the position with 68% of the vote. His attorneys say the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision does not affect the federal lawsuit.
But Margo Rusconi, Duncan’s lawyer, said a new amendment to his petition, filed August 14, also claims the law is being used as punishment without a trial for speaking publicly about his criminal history. Duncan was sentenced to life without parole at Angola for a 1981 murder, but maintained his innocence and was later exonerated in 2021.
“ Notwithstanding that clear, decisive electoral victory, the defendants in this case — most specifically Gov. Landry and the attorney general — have been targeting Calvin for a long time now, both for his efforts and his campaign focus on criminal justice reform,” Rusconi said in an interview for WWNO’s Louisiana Considered. “Based on his claims and… the reality of the fact that he has been exonerated for a crime he was wrongfully convicted of many years ago.”
The petition also claims state officials violated Duncan’s equal protection rights in a “naked power grab.”
“Defendants’ intentional race discrimination is the direct and proximate cause of Mr. Duncan’s injury — the loss of the office and term to which a majority-Black electorate elected him,” the petition reads. “That injury is ongoing and irreparable, has no adequate remedy at law, and would be redressed by the relief Mr. Duncan seeks.”
In a statement, Duncan said Landry and Murrill were trying to “bully the victims of their criminal legal system.”
“I fought hard to become the Clerk of the Orleans Criminal District Court because I did not want what happened to me to happen to anybody else,” he said. “And despite Landry and Murrill’s efforts to defame and defeat me, the people of New Orleans elected me to fix the Criminal Clerk’s Office that unconstitutionally keeps so many of us in prison.”
“That is not the American way that we are taught in school. They can’t intimidate us out of exercising our rights — to vote, to run for office, to sue the state when it locks us up for something we did not do, and to tell the truth about all of that — unless we let them. I will not let them.”
Murrill did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
In July, Murrill was indicted by an Orleans Parish grand jury on 16 felony charges — two per letter she sent New Orleans officials saying she’d take legal action to remove the officials from office if they went ahead with a planned special election for clerk of court, which Duncan had indicated he’d run for.
Those charges were later dropped at the request of city officials.
