On Monday, a judge will hear Joy Banner’s contention that St. John the Baptist Parish Council Chairman Michael Wright restricted her right to voice her opinion.
The U.S. Eastern District of Louisiana will hear opening arguments in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by Joy Banner, co-founder of The Descendants Project, after Wright allegedly threatened Banner as she tried to speak during the public comment portion of a council meeting.
A jury, picked on Monday, will decide whether Chairman Wright’s actions violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law.
At a November 2023 meeting, Banner rose to comment on the council’s proposed resolution to hire a lawyer, using taxpayer dollars, to defend St. John’s Parish President Jaclyn Hotard from an ethics complaint.
Banner had also lodged the complaint with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, citing conflict of interest between Hotard’s personal interests and her official involvement with rezoning a controversial piece of land owned by Greenfield Louisiana.
Greenfield intended to turn the farmland into a massive grain export facility in the small, historically Black village of Wallace, the Banners’ hometown. The nonprofit Descendants Project fought St. John Parish for a few years over the zoning of the grain-export facility’s intended site. Stymied by multiple lawsuits brought by The Descendants Project and by delays from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Greenfield halted its plans in August.
Hotard’s mother-in-law Darla Gaudet stood to financially benefit from rezoning the rural sugarcane land in Wallace for Greenfield’s proposed, heavy-industrial use, Banner contended.
Gaudet owned property through her business, Gaumet Holdings, LLC, that ran through the area being rezoned. Hotard personally signed an application to rezone the land.
Another conflict of interest also seemed possible. Gaudet was manager and officer for St. John Fleeting, LLC, which contracts with local industry and might have contracted with Greenfield.
Despite Banner’s warning about Hotard’s potential personal-professional conflicts, the Parish Council voted to use public money to retain a lawyer to defend Hotard.
After Banner’s inquiry, in September 2024, the Louisiana Board of Ethics found that Hotard had not violated the Code of Governmental Ethics.
A threat concealed in text messages
During pre-trial depositions in Banner’s suit, Hotard told the court she did not know that her mother-in-law could have profited financially if the parish rezoned the farmland to make way for the controversial grain terminal.
But Banner’s legal team filed a subpoena for text messages between Hotard and Gaudet, which showed otherwise.
The texts revealed crude hostility toward Banner – Hotard and Gaudet spoke about wanting to “choke” Banner, whom Hotard described as a “bitch.” But beyond that, the text messages showed without a doubt that Hotard knew that the land rezoning affected Gaudet’s land holdings and would lead to monetary gains. She texted maps of the land and sent messages before and after the meeting.
The deception was clear, Banner’s attorneys argued. “Defendant Hotard lied.”
An open threat in an open meeting
Louisiana state law requires public bodies to accept public comment before each action item at a public meeting. But in November 2023, as Banner began to speak, Wright read a criminal statute. He implied that if she continued speaking, she would somehow be violating that statute and breaking the law, in a way that was punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 or imprisonment for up to a year.
Banner was frightened by the exchange. “I felt threatened,” she told The Lens at the time.
Quickly, William Most, a lawyer for the Banner sisters, informed the parish that the law Wright had recited was invalidated by a federal judge in 2014. The state legislature’s website shows that the statute was found to be unconstitutional by a commission as early as 2016.
This week’s jury trial, which begins on Monday, will focus on whether Wright’s threat of prosecution for free speech during an open meeting violated the Constitution.
Should the jury find Wright’s use of a long-unconstitutional law to silence a critic a violation, the jury would also decide whether to void the council’s decision to retain a lawyer for Hotard’s ethics complaint.
This story has been updated to reflect additional information from the Louisiana Board of Ethics.