Louisiana voters reject all five Landry-backed constitutional amendments again

Louisiana voters once again shut down Gov. Jeff Landry’s attempt to rewrite the state constitution, rejecting all five amendments on a ballot that drew nearly 800,000 Louisianians on May 16. For the second year in a row, voters turned down Landry-backed measures, raising fresh questions about how far executive power can go in a Republican-dominated state when voters no longer trust the agenda.

The five defeated amendments touched some of the most sensitive corners of state government. Amendment 1 would have let lawmakers add or remove officers, positions and employees from the unclassified state civil service without Civil Service Commission approval. Amendment 2 would have given the St. George Community School System in East Baton Rouge Parish the same authority as a parish school system. Amendment 3 would have financed a $2,250 teacher pay raise and a $1,125 support-staff raise by using remaining savings from paying down Teachers’ Retirement System debt and closing three education trust funds. Amendment 4 dealt with parish property-tax rules, and Amendment 5 would have raised the mandatory judicial retirement age from 70 to 75.

Amendment 3 carried the clearest policy fight. Teachers’ unions backed it, arguing that the plan would move Louisiana from temporary stipends toward permanent salary growth while protecting retirement benefits. Republican leaders and other opponents warned that the tradeoff required closing education funds that could otherwise support schools long term. The statewide rejection made clear that the pitch did not overcome voter skepticism about tying raises to constitutional restructuring.

Amendment 2 was especially decisive in the Baton Rouge area, where the fight over a separate St. George school district has become a proxy for race, class and control over public education in East Baton Rouge Parish. Statewide, about 64% of voters rejected the measure, and in East Baton Rouge Parish about 69% voted no. The result ended the latest bid to create a separate St. George school system and underscored how even local organizing could not carry the amendment across the finish line.

The broader pattern matters beyond one election night. Louisiana’s constitution has been amended 221 times since 1974, making it one of the nation’s most frequently altered state charters. But repeated defeat at the ballot box, first in March 2025 and again in May 2026, suggests Landry’s effort to use constitutional change as a governing tool is running into a harder limit: voters are willing to block it, even when the state’s political map leans red.