BATON ROUGE — After a nearly seven-hour hearing late Tuesday, a judge ruled that two candidates in the running for a seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court could continue to run after a lawsuit challenged the pair's candidacies. 

Second Circuit appellate judge Marcus Hunter and Louisiana Housing Corporation Chief of Staff Leslie Ricard Chambers will be allowed to continue running for a judgeship for the 2nd District, which was recently redrawn, making it the state's second Black-majority district.

“So here’s my decision: Judge Hunter and candidate Chambers are not disqualified," Judge Donald Johnson said.

The lawsuit, filed by a 73-year-old Baton Rouge woman named Elise Knowles Collins, said that Chambers lives outside the judicial district and Hunter failed to file state income taxes in three of the last five years, a requirement to run for the post under state law.

If Johnson had ruled toward the plaintiff, it would have eliminated all of First Circuit Court of Appeal Chief Judge John Michael Guidry's opposition to the newly redrawn Supreme Court seat before the Nov. 5 primary. State Supreme Court justices serve 10-year terms.

The injunction, filed on Friday, said Chambers doesn't live in the newly redrawn district. According to property records, Chambers owns a home in Prairieville and has used her Ascension Parish address on campaign records on multiple occasions. 

Louisiana requires candidates to live in districts they seek to represent, but the exact definition of residency is not always clear. Courts often interpret the law generously, encouraging candidates to run for office. In the past, courts have allowed candidates to run in redrawn districts.

The Louisiana constitution says candidates must be domiciled in the district at least a year before the election date to be legitimate contenders for public office.

The issue came up because Ascension Parish not being in the Supreme Court’s 2nd District before the new map took effect, having previously been in the court’s 5th District along with East Baton Rouge and six other parishes. State lawmakers this year redrew the judicial boundaries to carve out a second majority-Black voting district for the seven-member court, which includes 17 parishes from Iberville Parish to Monroe.

Chambers' defense centered on whether she became an “orphaned candidate” when the districts were redrawn, noting that her connections within East Baton Rouge Parish when it was part of District 5 with her residency in Ascension Parish. Ascension Parish is now within District 6, while she is running for a judgeship in Baton Rouge’s District 2.

Chambers, who has never resided in District 2 even before the redrawing of lines, has never run for or held public office before her current bid for judgeship.

Collins' lawyers argued that she “still has the ability to run in District 6 when that vacancy occurs,” and that running in District 2 should not be allowed.

Arguments also strayed into whether or not Chambers properly filed her 2022 income taxes electronically to legally qualify for the election at all. If she had not filed her taxes properly, her candidacy could have been thrown out for providing a false certification.

State law also requires Supreme Court candidates to file their state and federal taxes for each of the five years leading up to elections to run. Candidates who haven’t filed can still qualify if they’ve filed for extensions on their tax submissions.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiff alleged a public records request from the Louisiana Department of Revenue showed Hunter didn’t file his state taxes in 2021, 2022 or 2023, even though he claimed he did when he filled out his notice of candidacy form for the November election.

The suit argued that this was grounds to remove Hunter from the ballot. 

Ultimately, Hunter's accountant testified that she filed his 2021 taxes two years ago, and filed his 2022 and 2023 returns on July 16, one day before the three-day qualifying period for the race began.

The plaintiff's attorneys said they plan to file an appeal this week, opening the discussion to a larger debate on candidates' residencies.