Democracy in Action: Louisiana Residents Win Right to Secede from Democrat-Run State Capital and Create their Own City
Residents in Louisiana’s Democrat-run capital city have won a historic battle to secede and create their own city following a lengthy court battle.
As the New York Times reported, the Louisiana Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for a group of mostly-white, affluent residents of Baton Rouge to secede and form the new city of St. George. This is the first city incorporated in the Pelican State in almost two decades.
In the 4-3 ruling, the justices found that lower courts were wrong in blocking St George’s creation over concerns of its financial viability.
Andrew Murrell, one of the leaders of the St. George movement, released the following statement after the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision.
This is the culmination of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. We voted and we won.
Whether you are for or you are against St. George, now is your opportunity, a historic opportunity, to create a city from the beginning, from the ground up. It’s your ideas, it’s your policies, it’s your way of life and now you can come together and put those out there and have someone accountable to you.
Now, we begin the process of delivering on our promises of a better city. We welcome both our friends and foes to the table to create St. George.
The Times reported that in 2015, supporters failed to collect enough signatures to bring their proposal up for a vote but prevailed in 2019 before a lengthy court battle stalled the initiative.
The New York Post notes that Sharon Weston Broome, the mayor-president who leads the combined Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish governments, previously sued the St. George organizers. She whined that the secession would suck more than $48 million in yearly tax revenue from the local government.
St. George will be Louisiana’s sixth largest city in terms of population, with nearly 100,000 people.
St. George will likely be a GOP stronghold as well, given its heavily white population. In 2020, white Louisianans supported President Trump by a 77%–22% margin while blacks supported Joe Biden by 88%–10%.
While Broome committed to serving the residents of St. George following the vote, others fumed. The local NAACP released a statement slamming the new town and warning the development would negatively impact Baton Rouge’s education system and “community representation.”
The St. George plan poses significant risks to our education system, threatens the continuity of critical programs, and challenges community representation. The creation of a new municipality introduces considerable uncertainty around funding allocation for our schools, jeopardizing the cornerstone of our community’s future: education.
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