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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
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Lawmakers reject insurance bills that had direct relief for Louisiana homeowners
Gov. Jeff Landry speaks to reporters about his legislative agenda to bring down high auto insurance rates on April 9, 2025. (Photo credit: Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator) With just two days left to write new laws in the 2025 legislative session, Louisiana lawmakers have halted the only two insurance proposals this year that critics said would have directly provided relief to homeowners struggling to afford skyrocketing rates. Senate Bill 235 and House Bill 356 drew wide public interest as homeowners wait for state officials to rein in the coverage costs. Average homeowner insurance premiums in Louisiana are the eighth highest in the nation, according to the industry news site Both were also among the few insurance bills that had bipartisan support, though not quite enough from conservatives. Sponsored by Sen. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, Senate Bill 235 would have created an annual tax credit of up to $2,000 for homeowner's insurance payments. It would have been available to anyone with homeowner's coverage and an income no greater than 200% of the federal poverty level. The legislation included a provision to sunset the credit after 10 years. After narrowly clearing the Senate, Duplessis' SB-235 narrowly failed in the House as Republicans there tanked it with a two-vote margin, 49-52. The other measure, House Bill 356 by Rep. Jacob Braud, R-Belle Chasse, would have required insurance companies to let homeowners who are free of mortgages to purchase 'stated value' policies. It would cover the home for a lesser amount chosen by the homeowner rather than for its full market value. Although the bill is still alive, it's a mere shell of the version that cleared the House in a 79-20 vote just last week when it drew strong vocal support from Republicans like Rep. Tim Kerner of Lafitte, who called it the only bill he has seen this year that actually helps homeowners with affordability. The original measure would have required insurers to create stated value policies upon the request of a customer, but Senate lawmakers changed a single word in the bill — from 'shall' to 'may' — doing away with the mandate provision that served as the cornerstone on which the rest of the bill relied. Rep. Mike Bayham, R-Chalmette, expressed his disappointment over the fate of the two bills in an interview Tuesday, saying the high cost of insurance is the one issue above all others that lawmakers really needed to fix. 'Everything else seems to be, 'Let's pass something and just hope the rates get better,' Bayham said. 'I thought Braud's bill was more direct, and I thought Duplessis' bill would have provided direct relief even on a limited scale. At the end of the day, we were elected to the Legislature to tackle the insurance crisis.' The version of Duplessis' bill that reached the House floor would have capped the state's total annual payouts for the homeowner's insurance tax credit at $10 million. It also would have made the credit refundable for filers earning less than $25,000 per year, meaning they could have received a cash rebate for the credit. However, Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carencro, gathered enough votes for an amendment to remove the refundable provision and to lower the state's payout cap to $1 million per year. Rep. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, who presented the bill on the House floor for Duplessis, objected to those changes but lost that vote in a 65-29 decision. 'This bill is to try to help those who need the most as far as homeowner insurance is concerned,' Riser said. Emerson said the bill would only shift the cost of high homeowner's insurance to the broader Louisiana tax base while doing nothing to address the underlying causes of high rates. 'I don't think that that gives a lot of incentive for rates to go down when we're basically subsidizing those rates,' she said. House Insurance Committee Chairman Gabe Firment, R-Pollock, who has spearheaded much of the pro-insurance industry legislation this year, rallied his conservative colleagues to oppose Duplessis' bill by calling out one of the organizations backing it, the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance. Firment took issue with recent text messages from the Alliance that accused lawmakers of doing nothing to pass meaningful insurance reform. He pointed out the group gave a poor rating to Republican Congressman Steve Scalise ahead of his 2024 reelection and a positive rating to the Democratic challenger Mel Manuel, whom Firment called a 'radical transgender candidate.' Questioning the relevance of those comments, House Speaker Phillip DeVillier, R-Eunice, began interjecting to ask Firment to focus his comments on the bill, but the Grant Parish lawmaker had made his point and yielded the floor. Louisiana homeowners might get option to insure their properties for 'stated value' Meanwhile Monday in the Senate, members of the upper chamber were approving a neutered version of Braud's legislation with little discussion. If signed into law, the Senate's version of the legislation would make no changes to what is already allowed under current law. Stated value policies are typically customized for homeowners who have paid off all or most of their mortgage and prefer to shoulder the risk of having only partial coverage. They would receive lower premiums in exchange for paying out-of-pocket for any damages, increasing the likelihood of losing their homes entirely in the event of a bad storm or a lawsuit. In an interview Tuesday, Braud said there's no law that would currently stop insurers from selling stated-value policies, but he wouldn't go so far as to say the Senate changes rendered his proposal a 'do-nothing' bill. 'We've gotta start somewhere,' the Plaquemines Parish lawmaker said. Braud added that he believes passing the neutered version of the bill might not change anything this year, but it could help the idea of stated value polices gain momentum. Braud said he hopes he can get the word 'shall' back into the law during next year's session. Pro-industry lawmakers such as Firment opposed Braud's legislation, arguing it would shift insurance costs to other parts of the state that aren't prone to hurricanes and would lead to an increase in blighted property from people abandoning their damaged homes after storms. Ironically, the same group Firment criticized during debate on Duplessis' bill is aligned with him in opposition to Braud's bill. In a phone interview Tuesday, Andreanecia Morris, president of the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance, said her organization is sympathetic to the plight of homeowners everywhere who can't afford insurance, but she believes Braud's bill doesn't address the underlying problem of high rates. 'We're not fans of encouraging homeowners to go it alone and not have enough insurance to replace their homes should the worst happen,' Morris said. 'People can't afford what they need, and that's the issue. Solving that problem isn't gonna be accomplished by just asking them to need less. It's like asking them to breathe less.' Lawmakers could be doing more to solve the problem and regulate the insurance industry, she said, adding that Braud's bill could spell disaster if too many Louisiana residents go underinsured or drop out of the property insurance market altogether. 'It encourages you to gamble in a way that is unsustainable and could lead to you losing your home,' Morris said. 'We learned those lessons after Katrina.' Braud's bill is scheduled for a conference committee on Wednesday in which a small group of lawmakers from both chambers try to work on a compromise to get the measure passed. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Old split-jury verdicts in Louisiana could be revisited under advancing proposal
Herman Evans, who spent decades in prison for a crime he didn't commit, embraces a supporter after a Louisiana Senate committee approved a bill Tuesday, April 29, 2025, that would allow persons convicted by a split jury verdict to seek a retrial. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled split jury verdicts were unconstitutional, but it left it up to states to decide if they would apply the law retroactively to past convictions. (Delaney Nolan/Louisiana Illuminator) A packed legislative committee meeting erupted with cheers and sobs of joy Tuesday, as a bill advanced a long-awaited remedy for people imprisoned in Louisiana under unconstitutional split-jury verdicts. Senate Bill 218, by Sen. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, would allow people convicted by non-unanimous juries to petition for their cases to be reviewed. The Senate Committee on Judiciary B approved the proposal in a 5-1 vote. Up until 2018, Louisiana and Oregon were the only two states where defendants could be convicted if at least 10 of 12 jurors voted guilty. The standard goes back to a Jim Crow era law intended to nullify the voice of Black jurors. As of 2020, about 80% of people incarcerated in Louisiana on split-jury verdicts were Black based on a Project of Justice Initiative analysis. Louisiana voters approved an amendment in 2018 to do away with split verdicts, though it did not impact persons already tried and sentenced by a non-unanimous jury vote. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ramos v. Louisiana that split-jury convictions are unconstitutional, but justices left it up to states to determine if the ruling would apply retroactively to older cases. Two years later, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled the change applied only to verdicts after 2018, meaning those convicted by split juries before 2018 had no recourse. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Duplessis' bill would change that, but it still faces long odds in the Republican-dominated legislature. The bill, which found bipartisan support in committee, would need nine Republicans to support it on the Senate floor in addition to all Democrats. Gov. Jeff Landry, when he was attorney general, argued against the abandonment of split-jury verdicts when Ramos was before the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of Landry's arguments were echoed by the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, which opposes the bill. Its members argue, in part, that it would be too complex and costly to retry people convicted by split juries. There are currently 773 people incarcerated in Louisiana on non-unanimous jury convictions, according to the Promise of Justice Initiative. Duplessis' bill would allow them to petition for a retrial. If a judge deems the defendant eligible, their conviction would be voided, and a district attorney would then decide whether to re-prosecute their case, offer a plea deal, or dismiss the charges. Duplessis and other supporters pointed out any retrials would still favor the prosecutor because they could reuse witness testimony from the original trial, while the defense couldn't necessarily cross-examine those witnesses if they have since died or are otherwise unavailable. Will Snowden, a Loyola University law professor, said 13 people convicted by non-unanimous verdicts in Louisiana have been exonerated, citing figures from the Innocence Project New Orleans. Striking testimony for the bill came from Herman Evans, who was convicted in 1980 on a 10-2 jury and spent decades in Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for a murder he didn't commit. The Promise of Justice Initiative had his conviction overturned in 2024. Evans spoke of losing his father, daughter and three sisters while wrongly imprisoned. 'Every time I tried to make my voice heard over 37 years, I kept getting one word: denied,' Evans said. Upon release, he said, 'I left a lot of people behind that deserve to have their unconstitutional convictions overturned.' Jermaine Hudson, who was wrongfully convicted in 1999 in New Orleans by a split jury, spoke to the committee alongside Bobby Gumpright, whose false testimony as an 18-year-old led to Hudson's conviction. Hudson spent 22 years in prison for an armed robbery that never happened. On Tuesday, Gumpright wept as he spoke of Hudson's forgiveness. 'I couldn't change the past, but I could refuse to live the lie any longer while injustice continued,' Gumpright said. 'Louisiana can't change the past. But Louisiana can refuse to let its injustice live on.' Zach Daniels, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, disagreed with the assessment that all non-unanimous jury convictions are unjust. Some jurors who don't vote for convictions do so because they actually want stronger charges, such as first-degree murder instead of second-degree murder, Daniels said. He did not offer data on the frequency of such cases, but he disputed the Promise of Justice Initiative's count of people who could be entitled to new trials. The number is much larger than 773, he said. Sen. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, rejected Daniels' arguments. 'What about those individuals who were convicted and were innocent? The scope of work should not be an issue. The cost should not be an issue,' Bouie said. 'If we do not afford the opportunity, we close the doors of justice that are the result of a system of racism that created this problem.' Sen. Patrick McMath, R-Covington, agreed with Bouie. 'If there's just one innocent person serving time for a crime that they didn't do, I don't know how you justify the rationale that [because] this is difficult to do, we shouldn't do it,' McMath told Daniels. Duplessis also argued it is a disservice to victims to not ensure the right person has been convicted — and that wrongfully convicted people are themselves victims. The dialogue between Duplessis and Daniels grew heated toward the end of the two-hour hearing, as Duplessis challenged him on several points. He criticized Daniels for not having reached out to district attorneys in Oregon, where more than 700 people were retried after split-jury verdicts and it did not snarl the courts. 'I think it's a slap in the face to this committee because what it shows us is that you're not trying to solve the problem,' Duplessis told Daniels. 'I'm trying to find a solution. The question is: Are you?' After Sen. Robert Owen, R-Slidell, cast the clinching 'yes' vote to advance the bill to the Senate floor, cheers, applause and cries of 'thank you' broke out from the committee room crowd. Owen joined McMath, Bouie, Duplessis and Sen. Jimmie Harris, D-New Orleans, in supporting the proposal. Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, cast the only vote in opposition. He briefly noted during debate that no district attorneys showed up to support Duplessis' bill at Tuesday's committee hearing. 'There's no daylight between public opinion and doing the right thing on non-unanimous juries,' Mary-Patricia Wray, who's lobbied for the Promise of Justice Initiative since 2016, told Illuminator. 'This issue isn't controversial outside the Capitol. Voters already decided what justice looks like. Now it's the legislature's turn to catch up.' In the hallway after the hearing, people who had come to support the bill wept openly and hugged each other. 'I feel great,' Evans told the Illuminator, smiling broadly before turning away for another embrace. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
