La. Supreme Court settles Chief Justice dispute, rules for Johnson

The Louisiana Supreme Court resolved a racially tinged power struggle inside its own ranks, ruling today that Bernette Johnson should be the state’s first black chief justice. Johnson’s years of appointed and elected service on the high court give her the seniority needed to succeed Chief Justice Catherine “Kitty” Kimball early next year, the court says in a unanimous ruling. Justice Jeffrey Victory, who is white, argued Johnson’s appointed service shouldn’t count and that he deserves to be chief justice. Voters elected Johnson in 1994 to the state appeals court, and she was assigned to the Supreme Court as part of settlement of an earlier lawsuit that claimed the system for electing justices diluted black voting strength and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She served an eighth Supreme Court district centered in New Orleans until the court reverted back to seven districts in 2000, when she was elected to the high court. The racial dynamics of the case reverberated outside Louisiana. A long list of elected officials and civil rights advocates, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, called for Johnson to get the position. The New York Times published two editorials supporting her, one of which called the dispute an “unsettling example of how power can trample voting rights even where they should be sacrosanct.” The court says its ruling is based strictly on the law. The Associated Press has all the details here.