Louisiana Educator: Jindal Anti-teacher Law Ruled Unconstitutional . . . Again

Louisiana Educator: Jindal Anti-teacher Law Ruled Unconstitutional . . . Again:

Jindal Anti-teacher Law Ruled Unconstitutional . . . Again

District Judge Ben Jones has ruled that Governor Jindal's Act 1 of 2012 violates a teacher's constitutional rights in two important ways according to the Monroe News Star account.

My congratulations to the Louisiana Association of Educators and LAE attorney Brian Blackwell for this important victory for teachers. Much credit should go to Judge Jones who refused to allow a teacher tenure hearing to be held in a "Knagaroo Court". Act 1 had set up a new procedure for teacher tenure hearings where two of the three hearing officers were to be selected by the school system superintendent and the school principal. These of course would be the persons that had already decided to dismiss the teacher. The judge said it would be "dumb" to consider this a fair hearing.

In addition, Judge Jones ruled that a provision in Act 1 that would have limited judicial review of a tenured teacher's dismissal was in violation of a teacher's property rights under the US Constitution. This decision along with an earlier decision ruling Act 1 unconstitutional shows that our state judges believe that the teaching profession should get much more respect than was afforded to them by the Governor and the Legislature.

Jindal has now spent millions of our tax dollars on private lawyers defending the ill conceived ALEC legislation that was designed to