Category: Louisiana News

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court announced Thursday that it will take a second look at an emotionally fraught lawsuit governing the adoption of Native American children.

In August, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. It was a defeat for non-Indian families in multiple states who had adopted or sought to adopt American Indian children.

On Thursday, the New Orleans-based court said a majority of its active judges have voted to re-hear the case. It means Native American tribes and the federal government will again have to defend the law, which they say is critical to protect and preserve Native American culture and families.

A hearing date has not been set.

The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the law are Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, a Texas couple who fostered a baby eligible for membership in both the Navajo and Cherokee tribes. The boy’s parents voluntarily terminated their parental rights and the Brackeens petitioned to adopt him. After legal battles, they were able to keep him when a placement with a Navajo family fell through. They hope to adopt his younger half-sister, according to briefs.

Other plaintiffs include Jason and Danielle Clifford of Minnesota, who were unable to adopt a child who lived with them after having been shuttled among foster homes. “The Cliffords’ family was literally torn apart,” their attorney told the appeals court judges during arguments in March.

Texas, Indiana and Louisiana have also joined the lawsuit, siding with the would-be adoptive families.

Defendants include the federal government and numerous intervening Native American organizations and tribes who back the law. They say that without it, many Native American children will be lost to their families and tribes.

“Tribal nations are still reeling from generations of our families being separated,” Tyson Johnston, vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation said in March after a 5th Circuit hearing. “So, even though we’ve had good policy like the Indian Child Welfare Act, it’s going to take us many more generations to rectify those past wrongs.”

Opponents of the law called it an unconstitutional race-based intrusion on states’ powers to govern adoptions. But two members of the three-judge panel that ruled this year disagreed.

The opinion written by Judge James L. Dennis said the law’s definition of an “Indian child” is a political classification. It said the definition is broad, “extending to children without Indian blood, such as the descendants of former slaves of tribes who became members after they were freed, or the descendants of adopted white persons,” Dennis wrote.

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana city council has approved a $3.8 million pay increase for police officers, raising starting pay from $34,600 to $40,000.

News outlets report Lafayette City-Parish Council unanimously approved the increase Tuesday for all Lafayette officers, except the chief. The department requested the raise to keep officers from leaving in search of better pay.

Mayor-President Joel Robideaux previously said the entire $3.8 million won’t be taken from the state’s general fund.

Chief Financial Officer Lorrie Toups says the 2019-20 budget is already expected to use more than $11 million from the savings.

The council also introduced a pay increase ordinance for firefighters and Consolidated Government employees. The council is expected to vote on Nov. 19.

Toups says the combined increase would cost $7.3 million, depleting the general fund by 2023.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Five hundred seventy-one Louisiana public schools, or about 44 percent, have “persistently struggling groups of students” and are now required to develop improvement plans.

Louisiana’s Department of Education released performance data Wednesday as part of the state’s compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

Among the 571 schools are 271 labeled as needing “comprehensive improvement,” for persistent low overall grades or poor graduation rates.

Three hundred other schools — including some with high overall grades — must work to improve performance among sub-groups of students. Those groups include English language learners; low-income students and those with disabilities.

The department pointed to promising findings, including more schools earning A and B grades. And the number of school systems earning A grades increased from four to nine since last year.

ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) — A Louisiana man has been sentenced to two years’ supervised probation for raping a 40-year-old resident of an assisted living facility in 2016.

The Daily Town Talk reports 63-year-old Bernard Jones pleaded guilty Monday to a felony charge of cruelty to the infirm.

He had faced up to four years of hard labor if convicted of his initial charge of first-degree rape at his trial that was set to start this week. Jones also was ordered Monday to avoid all contact with the victim and the victim’s family.

It’s unclear why it took more than three years for the case to go to trial, why Jones took a plea deal at the last minute and how Jones was connected to the victim. The facility hasn’t been publicly named.

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Information from: Alexandria Daily Town Talk, http://www.thetowntalk.com

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Businesses in New Orleans affected by the partial collapse of a hotel under construction are eligible for low-interest federal disaster loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The Hard Rock Hotel was under construction when part of it collapsed Oct. 12. Three people were killed.

Gov. John Bel Edwards requested the SBA assistance after talking with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other officials. The loan declaration covers Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and St. Tammany parishes. Edwards says he hopes the loans will help businesses recover and continue operating.

Tanya N. Garfield, director of SBA’s Disaster Field Operations Center-West, says the loans of up to $2 million can be used to pay bills, including payroll. Applicants may apply online or call SBA’s Customer Service Center.

The application deadline is Aug. 5.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Novelist Ernest J. Gaines, whose poor childhood on a small Louisiana plantation germinated stories of black struggles that grew into universal tales of grace and beauty, has died. He was 86.

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which sponsors a literary award in Gaines’ honor, confirmed he died Tuesday in his sleep of cardiac arrest at his home in Oscar, Louisiana.

“Ernest Gaines was a Louisiana treasure,” foundation president and CEO John Davies said in a statement. “He will be remembered for his powerful prose that placed the reader directly into the story of the old South, as only he could describe it. We have lost a giant and a friend.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a statement that Gaines “used his immense vision and literary talents to tell the stories of African Americans in the South. We are all blessed that Ernest left words and stories that will continue to inspire many generations to come.”

“A Lesson Before Dying,” published in 1993, was an acclaimed classic. Gaines was awarded a “genius grant” that year by the MacArthur Foundation, receiving $335,000.

Both “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (1971) and “A Gathering of Old Men” (1984) became honored television movies.

The author of eight books, Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish. His first writing experience was writing letters for illiterate workers who asked him to embellish their news to far-off relatives. Bayonne, the setting for Gaines’ fiction, was actually New Roads, Louisiana, which Gaines left for California when he was 15.

Although books were denied him throughout his childhood because of Louisiana’s strict segregation, which extended even to libraries, he found the life surrounding him rich enough to recollect in story after story through exact and vivid detail.

In “A Lesson Before Dying,” for example, the central figure is the teacher at the plantation school outside town. Through the teacher, whose profession Gaines elevates to a calling, the novelist explores the consistent themes of his work: sacrifice and duty, the obligation to others, the qualities of loving, the nature of courage.

Gaines found that using his storytelling gifts meant more than militant civil rights action. “When Bull Connor would sic the dogs, I thought, ‘Hell, write a better paragraph.’

“In 1968, when I was writing ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,’ my friends said, ‘Why write about a 110-year-old lady when all of this is going on now?’ And I said, ‘I think she’s going to have something to say about it.’”

What Gaines’ characters said about it achieved a power and timelessness that made him a distinctive voice in American literature. Much of the appeal of his books is their seeming simplicity and straightforward story line. “I can never write big novels,” he always maintained. But the questions he explored were the eternal ones great writers confront: what it means to be human, what a human lives and dies for.

A large, gentlemanly man with a certain bohemian air — braces and berets were favorite attire — and a stately manner, Gaines was devoted to friends and family. When he married in 1993 at age 60, he celebrated in Lafayette, New Orleans, Miami, and San Francisco, so the gatherings could include his intimates. Dianne Saulney Gaines is an assistant district attorney for Dade County, Florida. The couple divided their time among various abodes but spent the MacArthur money on a year in France and other travels.

Gaines spent the fall teaching creative writing at the then-University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette) since 1983. It’s only about an hour’s drive from his childhood home.

He could not write and teach at the same time. He needed five or six hours each day devoted to writing and “I can’t write a couple of days and skip two or three days.”

“A Lesson Before Dying” took seven years.

“I work five days a week, just like a regular job. I get up in the morning, do a little exercise, eat a little breakfast. I’m at my desk by nine in the morning, work until three with a little break for lunch,” he said.

His literary influences were eclectic. Since he got a late start as a reader, he read with a vengeance.

“I discovered John Steinbeck … then Willa Cather … then the great 19th Century Russian and French writers, writers like DeMaupassant and Flaubert. Then I discovered Ivan Turgenyev, the great Russian classicist. He wrote small novels where everyone wrote big novels. … (Turgenyev’s) ‘Fathers and Sons’ was one of my favorite books when I was a young man. It was my Bible when I was writing my first novel, ‘Catherine Carmier’ (1964),” he said.

Other books include “Of Love and Dust” (1967), “Bloodline” (1968), “A Long Day in November” (1971), and “In My Father’s House” (1978).

Among his numerous awards, Gaines received prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. He held honorary doctorates from five colleges and universities.

The Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence will continue as his legacy. It will be presented Jan. 30 to a rising African American author.