Louisiana voters will decide on May 16, 2026 whether to amend the state Constitution to let the Legislature reclassify state jobs out of civil-service protection by ordinary statute. Amendment 1 — originating as Act 223 of 2025, Senate Bill 8 by Sen. Jay Morris (R-35) — transfers authority currently held by an independent Civil Service Commission to the 144-member Legislature. The bill author has confirmed on the record that current employees, not just future hires, could be affected. Opponents — organized under the WE the People — Louisiana coalition — argue the measure is a return to the pre-Pendleton spoils system and creates the structural mechanism for politicized hiring and firing across state government.
Louisiana's classified civil service was written into the Constitution in 1952 for a reason. That reason was Huey Long. Amendment 1 undoes the architecture our grandparents built to protect us from a future Long. The people who want this power today may not be Longs. The people who will inherit it over the next thirty years are a gamble we don't have to take.
This is the who's-your-daddy amendment. It replaces competence with connections. It replaces the merit register with the donor list. It replaces the Civil Service Commission with the 144 people currently raising money for their next campaigns.
Every argument for Amendment 1 was made, and refuted, in the forty years between Andrew Jackson and the Pendleton Act. It took the assassination of President Garfield to settle the argument. We do not need to un-settle it in Louisiana in 2026.
If you are a state employee reading this, the question isn't abstract. The question is whether your job six months from now depends on your work — or on whose side you were seen on in the next legislative session. We think Louisiana's answer to that question should stay where the people put it in 1952: in the Constitution, out of the reach of any one Legislature.
Obviously, it can affect future employees. That's obvious. But it can affect existing employees. Sen. Jay Morris (R-35), bill author, to the Louisiana Illuminator, June 12, 2025
I think that the ballot language could be misleading. Sen. Royce Duplessis (D-New Orleans), on the Senate floor during SB 8 debate
The WE the People — Louisiana coalition can provide for interview:
Press contact: press@wethepeoplelouisiana.com
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