St. John the Baptist Parish did not violate either the First Amendment or the Louisiana Open Meetings Law, jurors in the U.S. Eastern District of Louisiana concluded after hearing evidence from both sides, in a trial held before Chief Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown.
The outcome was a disappointment to plaintiff Joy Banner, who, contending that her rights were violated during a November 2023 meeting, had brought the First Amendment suit against St. John the Baptist Parish, its former Council Chairman Michael Wright and Parish President Jaclyn Hotard.
But Banner said that the verdict was secondary in some ways. The prime purpose of the case was transparency, she said. “A lot of information came out in this trial that Jaclyn Hotard did not want to come out.” She and her lawyer, William Most, noted that it became clear that Hotard’s husband had a financial interest in the land where the Greenfield grain elevator was to be built.
Hotard and her mother-in-law Darla Gaudet also texted petty comments about Banner and her twin sister Jo, who formed The Descendants Project and fought Greenfield’s proposal in court. Some of those messages were dissected during the trial. For instance, Gaudet admitted that the two “poop emojis” in one text message represented the Banner sisters.
On Wednesday, after the plaintiffs and defendants rested their case, jurors considered whether the defendants restricted Banner’s speech.
Banner believed that her rights had been trampled on – as her attempts to speak were rebuffed – because she opposed the Council’s rezoning of farmland in Wallace, La., her hometown. The land was slated for industrial development by Greenfield, LLC, which planned to build a large grain elevator there.
Also, because Banner had reported Hotard for a possible state ethics violation, she saw the Council’s actions as retaliation.
The trial included testimony from Tonia Schnyder, a former councilwoman from District VI, who testified about the ambiguity surrounding the council’s decision to retain the law firm of R. Gray Sexton on Hotard’s behalf, for services related to ethics laws.
Ultimately, the firm was paid by taxpayer dollars to represent Hotard during the investigation by the Louisiana Board of Ethics, based on a complaint filed by Banner. The Board found no violations.
Schnyder and others testified that Banner was interrupted every time she tried to speak during the public comment period of the meeting. But the jury rewatched an official video recording of the meeting several times while sequestered. Despite the interruptions and threats, jurors decided that Banner had gotten her point across.
“The main evidence was the video we had,” said Cam Owen, a juror who works as a supervisor for Hotel Saint Vincent. The jury concluded her freedom of speech was not taken away because she managed to speak, he said, even as the council tried to stop her.
Other evidence introduced during the trial showed that Hotard’s family stood to make money from the land rezoning process she helped facilitate. But Hotard testified that when she signed, in her role as Parish President, an application to rezone land for Greenfield’s proposed heavy industrial use, she was unaware of her husband and mother-in-law’s financial connections to the land in Wallace.
Hotard and Wright said they supported the rezoning of the land as economic development for the West Bank. “I’m not the only business in St. John the Baptist Parish that would’ve benefited from it,” said Gaudet, whose business Gaumet Holdings, LLC owns tracts of land in the area being considered for rezoning.