A recent court ruling ordering Ascension Parish to release non-disclosure agreements tied to major industrial development projects in west Ascension could become a test of how far Louisiana governments can go in shielding economic development records from public view.
Judge Cody Martin of the 23rd Judicial District Court ruled last week that Ascension Parish improperly withheld NDAs connected to the proposed RiverPlex MegaPark development, finding the parish failed to follow procedures required under Louisiana’s public records law before claiming confidentiality protections.
“The burden of proving protection from production of documents is on the custodian who is bound by law to produce said documents,” Martin wrote in the ruling. “Ascension Parish has not met its burden in doing so.
Rural Roots Louisiana and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, environmental groups opposed to the massive buildout, filed the lawsuit in December after having public records requests denied last September.
The parish has appealed the ruling, temporarily delaying the release of the records. Pamela Matassa, deputy chief administrative officer for Ascension Parish, tells Ascension Business Report that parish officials would not comment since it is an ongoing legal matter.
“These projects are big and consequential, and people need to know what’s going on, so I think the rulings are really significant,” says Pam Spees, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and counsel for the plaintiffs.
The dispute centers largely on the economic development negotiations exemption that Louisiana lawmakers created in 2024.
According to Spees, the law requires government entities to declare on the record which records will be treated as confidential and to provide notice at the beginning of negotiations.
Spees argues that Ascension Parish attempted to apply those protections retroactively after the records requests and subsequent lawsuit had already been filed.
“The right to public records is in our state constitution, and the courts have said you’re supposed to take public records seriously,” Spees says. “The only time a state agency can withhold them is when there’s a very clear and explicit exemption written into law.”
The litigation is expanding beyond the NDAs themselves. A separate hearing on Wednesday involves another records request seeking documents related to agreements between Hyundai and the Ascension Economic Development Corporation.
The cases arrive as Ascension Parish becomes a focal point for billions of dollars in announced industrial investment. Hyundai Steel, CF Industries, Nemo Industries and Linde have all announced projects tied to the 17,000-acre RiverPlex MegaPark along the Mississippi River.
The lawsuits could ultimately help define how aggressively local governments statewide can invoke economic development exemptions as Louisiana competes for increasingly large industrial projects.
Spees says the case also exposes lingering ambiguities in the 2024 law itself, including questions over what qualifies as “economic development negotiations” and what records may legally remain confidential.
