Amendment 5 raises the mandatory retirement age for Louisiana judges from 70 to 75. Because of a term-completion clause written into the amendment, a judge elected at 74 to a 10-year term would keep the bench until age 84. Louisiana voters have said no to this exact question twice — in 1995 (62%–38%) and in 2014 (in 62 of 64 parishes). The Legislature is asking a third time. It is time to stop asking. Vote NO on Amendment 5.
The third branch of government belongs to the people of Louisiana. Judges serve at our tolerance, not their own preference. Louisiana's framers wrote a mandatory retirement age of 70 into the Constitution of 1974 because they understood that a judiciary which never turns over becomes a judiciary that forgets whose authority it borrows. Amendment 5 reverses that design. It adds five years to every sitting judge's tenure, and — through the term-completion clause — lets some of them serve into their eighties. It reduces how often voters can weigh in on who sits on our benches. It concentrates judicial power in the hands of the same people, for longer.
The word for this is entrenchment. Louisiana already has an entrenchment problem across every branch of state government. The Legislature is term-locked by partisan mechanics. The executive is built for continuity across administrations. The third branch, at least, has a retirement age that ensures regular turnover — that gives younger lawyers from underrepresented backgrounds a realistic expectation that seats will eventually open, that voters have something to vote on in judicial elections, and that the bench does not calcify around a fixed generation. Amendment 5 removes the single strongest turnover mechanism in Louisiana's governing structure. That is not a technical adjustment. That is a transfer of power from the voters to the incumbents.
If voters extend the retirement age, voters will have traded — with no offsetting protection — one of the few remaining tools of democratic accountability over the third branch. Vote NO on Amendment 5. Then keep reading to the bottom of this page, because the long-term answer is larger than any one ballot question.
Each of the five amendments hands a short-term win to a specific constituency at long-term cost to everyone else. Power upward. Costs downward. Amendment 5 is the entrenchment piece — the one that makes the pattern harder to reverse later, by extending incumbent judges' tenure and reducing how often voters get to weigh in.
The pattern is the problem. The remedy is the right of citizen initiative — statewide and by parish. See the closing call below.
1995: rejected 62% to 38%. 2014: rejected in 62 of 64 parishes. Amendment 5 is the third try at the same policy. The Legislature keeps asking. The people keep answering. The answer has not changed.
The amendment makes no distinction between judges who are serving well and judges who are not. It adds five years to every sitting judge's tenure, regardless of performance, docket, caseload outcomes, or judicial-conduct record. A blanket extension is not a reform. It is a gift.
The amendment lets a judge who turns 75 during a term complete that term. A judge elected at 74 to a 10-year Supreme Court or Court of Appeal seat serves to 84. That is not hypothetical. It is written in.
Fewer open seats means fewer contested judicial elections. Fewer contested elections means less voter scrutiny. The retirement age is the single most reliable turnover mechanism on the Louisiana bench. Removing it means voters weigh in less often on who sits on their courts.
Louisiana has a growing cohort of talented younger attorneys — women, Black attorneys, Latino attorneys, attorneys from outside the traditional legal pipeline — who expect that seats will eventually open. Amendment 5 delays that expectation by five years, in some cases by more. Fresh blood delayed is fresh blood denied.
The 1974 Constitutional Convention set judicial retirement at 70 after deliberation. It was not arbitrary. It was a considered balance between experience and turnover. Three successive legislatures have tried to override that balance without offering a substantive reform case for why 70 is wrong. "Other states have 75" is not a reason.
No individual judge is wrong to be competent at 80. Many are. But the distribution of cognitive performance across any large population, including lawyers and judges, shows meaningful decline after 75. A constitutional retirement age manages the distribution, not any individual. That is why it works.
Look at the first Senate vote, not the conference-report vote. The Senate passed HB 63 on June 6, 2025 by 26–13 — the second-closest legislative vote of any amendment in the May 16 package. Real dissent. State Sen. Alan Seabaugh reminded the floor: "We put this on the ballot before. It failed in 62 out of 64 parishes. Your constituents voted no."
Stop asking. Louisiana voters have answered this question twice. Retire the judges. Revitalize the third branch. Vote NO on 5 — and demand the right of citizen initiative so the Legislature cannot keep asking forever.
Screenshot this. Post it. Tag us #RetireTheJudges and #StopAskingLouisiana.
This is the exact ballot language published by the Louisiana Secretary of State. Note the phrase "provided that a judge may continue to serve to complete a term of office" — the term-completion clause that extends the effective retirement ceiling well past 75.
Louisiana trial-court judges serve 6-year terms. Louisiana Court of Appeal judges and Louisiana Supreme Court justices serve 10-year terms. If Amendment 5 passes, a judge who is elected to a 10-year term at age 74 — turning 75 during their first year in office — is permitted under the term-completion clause to serve out the entire 10-year term. That judge leaves the bench at 84.
This is not a worst-case reading. It is the reading that matches the ballot language. "Provided that a judge may continue to serve to complete a term of office" is the term-completion clause. A judge in a 10-year term whose 75th birthday falls anywhere in years 1–9 of that term keeps the bench until the term ends. The announced "age 75" ceiling is in practice an age-ceiling-plus-nearly-a-decade.
The YES-side framing describes this as "allowing experienced judges to serve out their terms." The more accurate framing is that it allows the end of a judge's tenure to float freely up to 84, depending on when the election happened to fall. Constitutional design should not hinge on the arithmetic accident of when a judge stood for re-election relative to their 75th birthday.
HB 63 was authored by Rep. Kyle Green, Jr. and introduced March 28, 2025. The House passed the bill 81–16 on May 28. The Senate passed it 26–13 on June 6 — the second-closest legislative vote of any of the five May 16 amendments, and a meaningful signal that consensus for the change is thinner than the conference-report votes suggest. The conference reports then passed 95–1 in the House on June 11 and 31–3 in the Senate on June 12.
The first Senate vote is the one to remember. Thirteen Senators voted no — about a third of the chamber. That is not a fringe position. It is a substantial bloc that read the same ballot language you are reading and concluded the amendment was not warranted.
Seabaugh is a conservative Republican from Shreveport. He is not a natural ally of a NO campaign on most issues. He is correct about the parish count. That detail — a 62-of-64 rejection is essentially a statewide consensus — is the single strongest historical argument against Amendment 5.
On the YES-side talking points.
Proponents make three arguments, none of which survive scrutiny. First, "Louisiana is an outlier at 70" — true of some neighbors (Texas, Florida are at 75; Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee have no cap), but also true that Vermont's cap is 90 and voters chose that in 2003. "Other states do it" is not a constitutional argument. Second, "we should keep experienced judges" — but the amendment does not distinguish between experience and underperformance; it is a blanket extension. Third, "voters can still defeat a judge at election" — which would be true if judicial elections in Louisiana were well-attended and well-informed. They are not. Judicial elections typically see lower turnout than partisan elections, and most voters have limited information about the judges on the ballot. "Just don't re-elect them" is not a substitute for a built-in turnover mechanism.
Louisiana voters have weighed in on judicial retirement ages three times in the last three decades. Each vote sent the same signal. The Legislature keeps sending the question back.
| Year | Measure | Result | What it did |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Amendment 4 | REJECTED · 62% – 38% | Would have raised the mandatory retirement age from 70 to 75. Same policy as Amendment 5 of 2026. Rejected by a wide statewide margin. |
| 2003 | Amendment 15 | PASSED · 58% – 42% | Did not raise the age. Allowed judges who reached 70 mid-term to complete their current term. A narrow carve-out, supported by voters specifically because it kept the cap at 70 while preserving the practical completion of active terms. |
| 2014 | Amendment (judicial age 70→75) | REJECTED · in 62 of 64 parishes | Same policy as 1995 and 2026. Rejected by a near-unanimous parish count. As Sen. Seabaugh said during 2025 debate: "Your constituents voted no." |
| 2026 | Amendment 5 | ON THE BALLOT · MAY 16 | Raises retirement age from 70 to 75, with term-completion clause allowing service to age 84 in some cases. Third time this basic question has been on a Louisiana ballot. |
Proponents of Amendment 5 sometimes point to the 2003 result as evidence of voter willingness to tinker with judicial retirement. The 2003 result shows the opposite. Voters approved Amendment 15 of 2003 specifically because it preserved the age-70 cap. The narrow accommodation in 2003 was: if a judge reaches 70 during a term, they complete the term. Nothing about the cap itself. Voters drew a clear line around 70 as the ceiling.
Amendment 5 of 2026 abandons that line. It raises the ceiling itself. The 2003 result, read honestly, supports opposition to Amendment 5 — because Louisiana voters' willingness to protect completion of current terms at 70 has never translated into willingness to move the cap up to 75. Each time they have been asked about 75, they have said no.
Amendment 5's supporters routinely cite states with retirement ages of 75 (Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington). What they omit is the national trend: since 2011, voters in ten states have decided on ten constitutional amendments addressing judicial retirement ages. Of those ten, voters approved only one — Pennsylvania, 2016, 51%–49%, a razor-thin margin. Every other state that asked voters to raise the age said no.
The most recent direct comparison is New Hampshire, 2024. An identical amendment — raising the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75 — received 65.6% approval. New Hampshire requires two-thirds approval for constitutional amendments, so the amendment failed, despite a substantial majority voting yes. In Louisiana, the same 65.6% would pass (Louisiana requires only a simple majority). Louisiana's constitutional bar is lower. That is an argument for more skepticism from Louisiana voters, not less. A policy that can squeak through on a narrow majority when neighboring state constitutions would reject it is a policy that deserves more scrutiny before enactment.
When voters in roughly nine out of ten state ballot measures since 2011 have rejected raising judicial retirement ages, and when Louisiana voters specifically have rejected the same policy in two of the last three decades, the most plausible interpretation is not "voters are confused about judicial retirement policy." The most plausible interpretation is that voters have a durable preference for regular turnover on the bench and do not want the ceiling moved. That preference is not irrational. It is considered, consistent, and widely held.
The Legislature's pattern of re-asking is the problem. It is the same problem Amendment 4 illustrates in the tax-policy domain — rejected policies re-proposed with cosmetic changes. It is the deeper problem that the Citizen Initiative tab below addresses. A state where the Legislature can force voters to re-litigate the same question every decade is a state that does not fully respect its own referendum results.
Entrenchment is the word political scientists use to describe a structural advantage that accrues to incumbents over time. It is how a political system loses its capacity for self-correction. A small number of people hold seats longer than the system was designed for; the people who would have replaced them age out; the bench — or the Legislature, or the executive agency — becomes a cohort, not a rotating institution. Entrenchment does not happen by accident. It happens when someone changes the rules.
Louisiana's framers wrote the age-70 retirement into Article V, Section 23 of the 1974 Constitution. They did so after considering the alternatives. The Constitutional Convention of 1973–74 heard testimony from judges, academics, and bar representatives. They concluded that 70 was the right balance between retaining experienced judges and ensuring the turnover a democratic judiciary requires. Every judge who took the bench in Louisiana since 1974 has done so knowing the rule. Every judge currently on the bench accepted the seat with a date on the horizon.
Amendment 5 extends that date by five years — and, through the term-completion clause, potentially by up to nine. It changes the rules for judges who are already on the bench. It is, in effect, a retroactive extension of the tenure of sitting judges. That is the definition of entrenchment: a rules change that benefits the incumbents who are present when the rule is changed.
Louisiana's bench is not demographically representative of Louisiana's population. The state's population is about one-third Black. The share of Louisiana judges who are Black is materially smaller, and has risen only slowly. The same is true for women on the bench, Latino judges, and judges from outside the traditional New Orleans / Baton Rouge / Shreveport legal pipelines.
Every year a seat does not open is a year the bench does not refresh. A five-year delay in turnover is a five-year delay in the slow process of demographic reform. For the cohort of Louisiana lawyers in their 40s and early 50s — many of whom are from communities historically underrepresented on the bench — Amendment 5 is a concrete, measurable delay in their reasonable expectation of judicial service. "Fresh blood delayed is fresh blood denied" is not rhetoric. It is what Amendment 5 does.
Louisiana elects most of its judges. That is the constitutional bargain: judges hold considerable power, and in exchange voters get to hold them accountable periodically. The retirement age is a structural supplement to electoral accountability. It ensures that even if a judge is consistently re-elected (as most are — judicial incumbency advantages are substantial in Louisiana as elsewhere), the seat will still turn over at some point. The retirement age is the part of judicial accountability that does not require voters to individually defeat a sitting judge at the ballot box.
Amendment 5 reduces that structural supplement by five years. It places more weight on electoral accountability — which is, as a matter of empirical reality, modest in judicial elections. Voter turnout in Louisiana judicial elections is lower than in partisan elections. Voter information about judicial candidates is limited. Most judicial incumbents run unopposed or nominally opposed. The electoral check is real but weak. Amendment 5 asks it to do more work without strengthening it. That is not a tradeoff. That is a net reduction in accountability.
A state constitution is supposed to constrain incumbents. It is the document that says: regardless of who currently holds office, the rules of the game are fixed, and they are not for sitting officials to rewrite in their own favor. When a sitting Legislature places before voters an amendment that materially extends the tenure of the sitting judiciary, that amendment is not a neutral technical adjustment. It is the Legislature, in coordination with the sitting bench, proposing to voters that incumbents get longer terms.
Voters are the check on that kind of self-dealing. In 1995 and 2014, Louisiana voters performed that check. They said no. Amendment 5 asks them to perform it a third time. The correct response is the same response they gave the first two times.
An independent judiciary is not a guild. It is a branch of government. Branches of government need turnover. They need the arrival of new members with different experiences, different training, different client bases, and different institutional loyalties. The arrival of new judges is how courts remain courts and not clubs.
Louisiana's bench has specific institutional weaknesses that depend on turnover to correct. The state's reliance on judicial elections — rather than merit-selection or gubernatorial appointment — means that sitting judges accumulate political relationships that shape their caseloads, their rulings, and their administrative priorities. Retirement creates the opportunity for judges whose formation was different, whose political relationships are newer or absent, and whose assumptions about how the bench should operate were formed in a different decade.
Specific corrections that turnover enables:
Proponents of Amendment 5 argue that experience matters, that a 72-year-old judge often brings more wisdom to the bench than a 42-year-old judge, and that forcing retirement at 70 deprives the state of valuable expertise. There is truth in each of these claims considered individually. There is a problem with all of them considered together.
The argument is true for some judges. It is not true for all judges. A mandatory retirement age manages the distribution across the bench, not the behavior of any individual judge. It accepts that the policy will occasionally force the retirement of an unusually capable older judge in order to ensure that the average performance of the bench improves with regular turnover. That tradeoff is considered and durable. The 1974 Constitutional Convention made it. Louisiana voters ratified it. Voters have reaffirmed it in 1995 and 2014.
A reform that addressed the valid kernel of the proponents' argument would look different. It might provide a judicial-emeritus designation for retired judges to sit by designation on complex cases. It might strengthen senior-judge programs that allow retired judges to handle specific dockets. It might expand the Judiciary Commission's authority to reassign matters where special expertise is needed. Those are targeted reforms that keep the retirement age while preserving the valuable expertise of retired judges in constrained ways. Amendment 5 does none of that. It simply extends the career of every sitting judge. That is not a reform. It is a gift, described in reform language.
The Louisiana judiciary is not failing. It does not need a rescue amendment. It needs the steady, generation-by-generation refresh that a mandatory retirement age provides. Voting NO on Amendment 5 keeps that refresh operating on schedule. Voting NO protects the bench from the very real risk — visible in many state judiciaries and in the federal judiciary — that an institution can ossify into a cohort of incumbents whose tenure exceeds the length of any election cycle that might check them.
The phrase is appropriate and exact: retire the judges, revitalize the third branch. Not out of disrespect. Out of respect for the office. Judges who are retired with dignity at 70, having served honorably, are the condition of possibility for new judges who will serve honorably in their turn. That is how the third branch stays the third branch.
Full analysis, primary sources, and structural argument. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.
1995, 2014, 2026. What voters have said, what they have meant by it, and why the Legislature keeps asking.
How the ballot language extends the effective retirement ceiling from 75 to as high as 84. The math, the statutory mechanism, and the drafters' choices.
Political science on incumbency, structural advantage, and the specific dynamics of elected judiciaries. Why a mandatory retirement age is the strongest turnover mechanism in Louisiana's governing structure.
The ten states that have asked voters this question since 2011. Nine rejections, one narrow approval. Louisiana's two prior rejections. The trend is real and it is one direction.
The structural remedy. How 26 other states handle this. What Louisiana would gain. The path forward. The case that ties all five amendments together.
Press contacts, quotable paragraphs, source list. For journalists on deadline.
Amendment 5 requires a statewide simple majority. Louisiana voters have defeated the same policy twice before. The task is to make sure those voters show up again.
Ask what they think. Many members of the Louisiana bar are quietly opposed to Amendment 5 because of the structural effect on younger attorneys in their firm. Ask if they are willing to say so publicly.
The 2014 rejection happened in 62 of 64 parishes. That is a statewide consensus. Share it on social. Tag #RetireTheJudges.
The long-term answer to "the Legislature keeps asking" is the citizen's own right to answer. Sign the petition at the bottom of this page.
One reminder before early voting. One before Election Day.
This is the fifth and final site in the WE the People — Louisiana series opposing the May 16, 2026 constitutional amendments. Across all five amendments, one pattern recurs: policies that Louisiana voters have already rejected, or that the Legislature cannot pass through ordinary legislation, are sent to voters as constitutional amendments. The voters say no. The Legislature re-asks. The voters say no again. Somewhere around the third asking, the question stops being whether to pass the amendment and starts being whether the citizens of Louisiana have any effective tool to stop being re-asked.
In 26 other states, they do. The people of those states can place proposals directly on the ballot themselves — statewide proposals through citizen initiative, and in many states, local proposals through parish-level or county-level initiative. If the Legislature refuses to act, the people act. If the Legislature re-asks a question the people already answered, the people can propose an alternative rather than choosing only between the legislative proposal and nothing. The right of citizen initiative is not radical, not experimental, and not partisan. It is the ordinary tool that half the country's voters already hold.
Louisiana does not. The Legislature holds sole authority to decide which questions reach the ballot. Citizens can lobby. Citizens can testify. Citizens can vote legislators in and out. But citizens cannot place a single question on a single ballot themselves — at the state level or at the parish level. This is the structural fact that makes Amendment 5 possible. It is why the same question can be asked a third time. It is why Amendment 4 can repackage a rejected proposal 14 months later. It is why Amendments 1, 2, and 3 can bypass what legislators could not pass directly.
Statewide initiative exists, in one form or another, in half the country. These states show it works:
Mississippi is on the list because its people have initiative (currently suspended by a 2021 state supreme court ruling that a reformed version should restore). Texas is not. Georgia is not. Alabama is not. Louisiana is not. Louisiana's absence from this list is a structural fact voters should notice.
Four concrete effects. Each one addresses a specific problem visible in the May 16 amendment package:
Five amendments. Five reasons to vote NO. One right that ties them all together.
Vote NO on all five. Sign the petition. Carry the work forward.
Questions, arguments, stories from Louisiana attorneys, younger lawyers, bar leaders, retired judges, and citizens. Civil disagreement welcome.