Louisiana’s Supreme Court on April 28 heard arguments over whether Act 314 of 2024 can be applied to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office’s immigration-related jail policy—one that has been in place for more than a decade and is tied to a federal consent decree.
The Orleans policy, defended by civil rights lawyers as a continuing federal court requirement, generally prohibits the sheriff’s office from holding people in the city jail at the request of federal immigration authorities. State attorneys, including those representing the state in the dispute, argued the 2024 law should override that older approach because it bars local jurisdictions from limiting cooperation with federal immigration investigations and requires local law enforcement to comply with immigration detainer requests.
At issue is how the court should treat the interaction between the 2024 statute and the federal settlement that created the current sheriff’s practice. The policy traces back to a case in which two construction workers, Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo, alleged that a former Orleans sheriff, Marlin Gusman, illegally held them inside the facility for months after their scheduled release dates, beyond what federal law authorizes for immigration detainers.
According to the court arguments summarized in the record, Cacho and Ocampo’s claims were resolved by a settlement approved in 2013, in which Gusman agreed to adopt an immigration policy barring the office from honoring detainer requests except in cases involving very serious criminal charges, including first degree murder, aggravated rape, or treason. The policy also, the arguments said, restricts sheriff’s office employees from initiating immigration-status investigations for people in jail and limits how employees share information about detainees with federal authorities.
The state’s challenge focuses on Act 314 of 2024, which the state said was designed to address “sanctuary” practices. Act 314, enacted in May 2024, prohibits local law government bodies from adopting policies that limit the extent to which they can cooperate with federal immigration investigations and requires local law enforcement to comply with immigration detainer requests—detainer requests that, typically issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authorize local jailers to hold certain people for up to 48 hours beyond their normal release dates to facilitate transfer to federal custody.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told the court that the Orleans Sheriff’s Office, like other state-bound agencies, cannot obstruct or impede federal immigration authorities. She said she looked forward to the Supreme Court’s swift resolution, arguing it should end the federal consent decree that she described as perpetuating an “unlawful sanctuary policy” in New Orleans, and she sought the state’s ability to intervene and to dissolve the 2013 policy in earlier proceedings.
The defense argued that Act 314 is not enough to undo the existing federal order governing the Orleans jail policy. Alyssa Bernard-Yanni, representing Cacho and Ocampo, said that the new state law alone may not be enough to dismiss a policy that originated in a federal judge’s order, and she told the Supreme Court that “Act 314 does not apply to federal consent decrees.”
Bernard-Yanni and Zachary Faircloth, representing the state, disputed what the court should consider in interpreting the statute’s reach and what role the federal consent decree should play. In filings described in the record, Bernard-Yanni and Faircloth’s teams asked the justices to consider, among other questions, whether the state law can apply to a pre-existing legal agreement, whether Act 314 conflicts with local autonomy under the state constitution for cities operating under a “home rule” charter, and whether the state law violates a constitutional prohibition on “unfunded mandates” imposed on local agencies.
During the hearing, the justices pressed on how the legislature intended the new law to operate, and whether that intent should control. Bernard-Yanni said the legislative record repeatedly addressed questions raised during the 2024 legislative session about whether Act 314 would impact the federal consent order, and she argued that lawmakers and sponsors did not intend to create a conflict with the consent decree.
The record described references to statements by Sen. Blake Miguez, a Republican sponsor of the bill that became Act 314, who said during the 2024 legislative debate that the measure was not meant to conflict with any federal court judgment. Bernard-Yanni told the court the sponsors “disclaimed any conflict under the respective consent decrees,” and she said those comments supported a reading that Act 314 could coexist with the federal requirements.
Faircloth, representing the state, said the legislative record should not matter and argued instead that the governing federal consent decree itself requires remaining in place absent a change in applicable federal or state law. He told the court, “We made the case over at the federal court,” and he said the plain language in the Cacho settlement reflects that any change would have to relate to immigration detainers.
The justices also focused on the city’s role in funding and the separate constitutional status of the sheriff’s office. Justice Cade Cole asked about the argument that the sheriff’s office fell under New Orleans’ home rule charter, and the defense responded by addressing the constitutional structure that, as described in the record, exempts sheriffs from being part of the charter. Justice John Michael Guidry acknowledged that even if the sheriff’s office does not fall under the home rule charter, it is funded by an entity connected to the city of New Orleans.
The argument on “unfunded mandates” included a discussion of who bears the cost of holding people on immigration detainers. Cole suggested that the federal government could address costs by paying jailers for the time they hold immigrants on detainers, but Bernard-Yanni corrected that characterization in the hearing record, saying jailers hold immigrants on detainers at their own expense unless they contract with the federal government to operate a long-term detention center, in which case federal reimbursement would apply; she said the Orleans Sheriff’s Office does not have such an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Guidry also pressed the defense on whether the sheriff’s office’s immigration-detainer stance was essentially local policy that Act 314 could change, or whether it was governed by the federal consent decree. He asked, in the words attributed in the record, whether the statute’s language—that local law enforcement cannot have a “sanctuary policy”—applies to a locally implemented policy or to the obligations of a federal court order.
As the hearing drew to a close, Chief Justice John Wiemer asked Bernard-Yanni about the correct remedy if the state believes the sheriff’s office is not complying with Act 314. Bernard-Yanni responded, according to the record, that the state cannot enjoin a federal consent decree. It was not clear when the Supreme Court will issue a ruling on the Orleans sheriff’s immigration policy or on how Act 314 affects that long-running federal settlement framework.