BATON ROUGE — Arguments were heard Tuesday in the First Circuit Court of Appeal on a challenge to the new voting map for seats on the 19th Judicial District Court.

A special election was called earlier this year to fill the vacant and unexpired seat left by 19th JDC Judge Wilson Fields, who was elected to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

The plaintiffs in the case are Chief Justice Don Johnson and three judicial candidates. The lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Karl Koch, said that since the governor announced the special election before the maps were signed into law, the old maps should remain in place.

"He's saying here's where you're going to conduct the election. The legislation doesn't have the authority to come in and say, ‘oh well, wait a minute, we're going to change that governor, we're going to do it here instead,’" Koch said.

The state argued once the governor signed his signature onto House Bill 124, the maps immediately went into effect.
"It's not what we say retroactive. In other words, it can't go back and change the past and certainly go back and modify what the governor did," Koch said.

Originally, there were three election districts, and the newly-approved, altered map shows the parish split in two.
The state said early voting starts Saturday, and absentee voting ballots were already sent out and submitted, and any changes ahead of the election will confuse voters.

Koch said the new map takes away two precincts that would've been eligible to vote.

"You can't weigh that difficulty against the loss of the right to vote for those 1,781 people. I'm sorry that it's inconvenient, but it's absolutely doable," he said.

A written decision is expected to be made on Wednesday.