Five attorneys at risk of losing their jobs running local public defender offices accused State Public Defender Rémy Starns of discriminating against women in charge of those offices.
It’s the latest development in a years-long power struggle between Starns and local public defenders over how much control Starns should have over their compensation and contracts.
The attorneys said Starns has targeted women for dismissal, having sought the termination of six of the 11 women who lead Louisiana’s 37 public defender offices. Four of those women are Black.
“My termination is not just unwarranted, it’s retaliatory. … It’s because I’m a woman,” said Michelle AndrePont, a white woman who runs Caddo Parish’s chief public defender office.
After hearing testimony from AndrePont and other attorneys, the State Public Defender Oversight Board delayed a vote Monday on Starns’ recommendation to terminate the five lawyers, including three of the six women supposedly targeted.
Instead, board members hastily scheduled a committee meeting for Wednesday afternoon to further review Starns’ decision to dismiss the attorneys. The full board plans to vote on the terminations next Monday, June 23.
There is some urgency for the board to make a decision. The attorneys will lose their jobs when their contracts expire June 30 unless the board tries to force Starns to extend them.
Starns forcefully denied allegations that he had targeted women for termination.
“Those statements are false, and I believe they knew them to be false,” he said at the board hearing.
Besides AndrePont, the other attorneys Starns seeks to dismiss later this month are Brett Brunson in Natchitoches Parish, Deirdre Fuller in Rapides Parish, Trisha Ward in Evangeline Parish and John Hogue, who works in Tensas, Madison and East Carroll parishes.
Women who lost their jobs previously include Lisa Park in East Baton Rouge in 2023, Chanel Long in Plaquemines Parish in 2024 and Lisa Martin of Lafayette earlier this year.
Brunson and Hogue, who are men, said Starns is attempting to force them out of their public defender jobs, in part, because they have defended their women colleagues.
“His targeting of women was unacceptable,” Brunson told the board.
The five attorneys facing termination this year also said they are being punished for raising questions about Starns’ policies. They have been the most outspoken about opposing Starns’ procedures at legislative and public defender board meetings over the past three years.
“I was terminated for choosing to participate in the legislative process on multiple occasions,” said Fuller, the first Black woman to run a local public defender’s office in Louisiana.
Starns declined to answer further questions from a reporter after the meeting.
New board, old chaos
Over the past year, public defender board meetings have been marked with escalating disorder.
Board members and Starns openly fight with each other, and Starns continues to ask the board to take votes on a pay plan for chief public defenders its members have already rejected twice.
“I’m going to keep asking for it until we get it,” Starnes said Monday.
In 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry and state lawmakers replaced a previous state public defender board with one that the governor gets to pick more of the members directly. The new board also has less authority over the state public defender, who is also selected by the governor.
So far, the board has faced many of the same problems that caused the last board to stall on making policy decisions. Three of its nine new members appointed just a year ago have already resigned.
Freddie Pitcher Jr., a retired state appellate judge who also ran Southern University’s law school, and Ted Hernandez, a Shreveport attorney, stepped down recently because there was “too much drama,” Pitcher said last week.
New Orleans attorney Peter Thomson, who was picked to serve as inspector general of the CIA last month, also resigned Monday.
Late last week, Landry replaced Pitcher with Jeffrey Hufft, a Metairie criminal defense attorney who previously worked as a prosecutor in New Orleans and the state attorney general’s office. Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, replaced Hernandez with another Metairie attorney, Stephen Dwyer, an expert in real estate and business law.
Hufft and Dwyer attended Monday’s meeting, but the governor has not yet appointed someone to take Thomson’s place.
Board member Phyllis Keaty, a retired state appellate judge appointed by Landry, said Starns’ lack of communication was contributing to the board’s instability.
“We have lost two members because of the chaos,” Keaty said.
“I see well-trained people working as public defenders, and I don’t understand how you can rid yourself and rid the state of well-trained people without a basis for getting rid of them,” she told Starns about his firing of the five attorneys.
“Why are these people being nonrenewed? We’ve asked and no answer has come up,” Keaty added.
New contracts, old fights
Keaty and two other members of the board are also upset that Starns is requiring all local public defender office leaders who are staying in their jobs after June 30 to sign a contract that circumvents the board’s authority on their pay and terminations.
The new contracts require the attorneys to waive their rights to use the board-approved compensation plan and board review of their termination. Starns is also requiring them to allow him to terminate them with just 30 days notice for no cause.
“This is the direction we need to go,” Starns told the board.”It’s hard to do it with people who don’t have the same goals as I do.”
In 2024, when legislators limited the new public defender board’s authority, they specifically kept a provision in law that required the board to continue to approve the local public defenders’ pay scale.
Starns has tried and failed twice over the past year to get the board to approve an alternative pay plan he wanted to use. His compensation strategy would raise compensation for some chief public defenders but cut pay for others by tens of thousands of dollars. Board members have said they are not comfortable cutting any lead public defenders’ pay dramatically.
So instead, Starns is asking the chief public defenders to sign contracts that would use his preferred compensation plan and not the board-approved version, which angered some board members.
“That plan has never been approved by this board. How can it be used as a basis for compensation if it has never been approved?” board member Adrejia Boutte asked Starns at the meeting. Boutte was picked to serve by the state public defender and criminal defense attorney organizations.
Frank Thaxton, a retired state judge appointed to the board by the Louisiana Supreme Court, said he had received an anonymous note from one chief public defender who felt forced to waive their rights in the contract.
Thaxton said he believed chief public defenders were fearful of pushing back against Starns over the contracts because it might cost them their jobs.
“The source of the chaos and the distraction is Mr. Starns,” Thaxton said.