Louisiana Legislature

The Louisiana Legislature will convene a week from today for a seven-day special session on the state’s homeowner’s insurance crisis. Its overriding goal is to rein in policy premiums that have soared after back-to-back catastrophic hurricane seasons, but lawmakers say more needs to be done than what can happen within the narrow scope of the weeklong session.

Gov. John Bel Edwards signed sweeping legislation Tuesday that would criminalize abortion in Louisiana and ban the procedure in nearly all circumstances from the moment of implantation if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The legislation does not include exceptions for rape and incest.

With Saturday’s action, state lawmakers have ceded the responsibility of drawing the congressional districts the state will use for the next ten years to the courts.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said he will allow legislation that would ban transgender girls from participating in school sports to become law without his signature, avoiding a potential veto override battle that the second-term Democrat expected to lose.

A controversial effort to arm some Louisiana teachers and administrators to combat school shooters failed in the final hours of this year’s legislative session.

For the second year in a row, Louisiana lawmakers have passed legislation that would ban transgender girls from competing in school sports. The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. John Bel Edwards, who vetoed nearly identical legislation last year.

Less than a week after Louisiana lawmakers rejected legislation that would explicitly allow people who end their pregnancies to be charged with homicide, a House committee advanced a different criminalization bill that abortion rights advocates say could lead to the same outcome.

Members of the state’s Senate Finance Committee worked over the weekend to advance the state’s nearly $40 billion operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year.Capitol Access reporter Paul Braun joined WWNO Host Karl Lengel to discuss the latest version of the state spending plans.

A controversial abortion bill that would have allowed the state of Louisiana to charge doctors who perform abortions and people who undergo the procedure with murder died on the House floor Thursday after Republican state lawmakers gutted the bill at the request of establishment anti-abortion organizations.

Ahead of its Thursday vote, a controversial proposal that would allow Louisiana to prosecute people who undergo or perform abortions as murderers faces an uncertain fate after anti-abortion groups came out against the legislation.