An effort to amend Louisiana’s constitution to ban slavery got mired in confusion last year after lawmakers added exceptions for prison labor, and the bill’s sponsor ultimately told voters to reject it at the polls.
Now the proposal is back before the state Legislature — and it could face setbacks again for the same reasons, after a House committee voted to add back the prison labor exception that got the measure in trouble in the first place.
In its original form, House Bill 211 is an attempt by Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, to correct confusion stemming from last year’s ballot effort. After asking voters to reject the slavery ban because he feared the prison labor exception could open unintended loopholes, Jordan brought the bill back to the Legislature this year with language aimed specifically at banning indentured servitude as well as slavery.
If enacted, Jordan’s bill would place a decision about the constitutional change in the hands of voters.
But amendments handed up by the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee effectively undid Jordan’s proposed fixes. Last week, the committee changed language that would have extended the ban to “involuntary servitude”; it also made clear that the ban would not apply to incarcerated people.
Some Republicans on the committee claimed that without those stipulations, the bill, if approved by voters, could interfere with the way the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections metes out sentences.
“Can this constitutional provision, if we allow this amendment to pass, be interpreted to say that the correctional facilities are not allowed to have the inmates work?” said Rep. Ray Garofalo, R-Chalmette. “My concern is the deterrence factor. I want to have something in our system that would be a deterrent.”
Others who sought the changes called the bill a solution in search of a problem and accused Jordan of trying to discretely ban labor for incarcerated people.
“I think the historical wrong was corrected a very long time ago,” said Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport. “I think Louisiana is open for business, and I’ve never heard one single employer saying they’d have a problem relocating to Louisiana because of this.”
Jordan strongly rejected the accusations that he has sought to outlaw labor for incarcerated people, saying the bill is simply a symbolic effort that would have little to no practical effect on the state Department of Corrections.
Stipulations about prison labor would simply confuse voters like they did last year, he said. He argued that even if the amendment did outlaw prison labor, the number of people in DOC custody who work during their sentences represent a relatively small percentage of the total system population.
“I think there is the cleanest version of it where there is no confusion and there is a very definitive statement on it,” Jordan told the committee.
But a version of the bill with the language carving out exceptions for prison labor passed and moved to the House floor. The lower chamber on Wednesday punted a scheduled vote on the bill.
Advocates had pushed for a stricter anti-slavery ban than the one Jordan ultimately consented to.
In the committee, some Democrats and members of the Legislative Black Caucus decried pushback on the bill from Republicans.
“I don’t know why folks get so sensitive to us saying slavery is prohibited,” said Rep. Wilford Carter, D-Lake Charles. “Why do we have a problem with that, here in 2023, like it’s going to keep someone from doing hard labor? It’s not going to keep anyone from doing hard labor, because that’s expressly dealt with in another part of the constitution.”
State Rep. Alonzo Knox, D-New Orleans, also blasted the criticism as a “red herring.”
“To see these good and decent people try as best as they can to rationalize – symbolic or not – why we should retain something that is so hurtful to so many of our state residents, I can’t fathom it,” he said.
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