Judges Louisiana

A judge who has sentenced at least 350 people to attend church was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU challenged the sentence handed to a man accused of drunk driving, saying the punishment violated the separation of church and state. Thomas P. Quirk, Lake Charles City Court judge, ordered Gregory Thompson to attend church once a week for a year on his no-contest plea in 1993. "I'm not going to stop until the courts tell me I've got to," Quirk said.

A Louisiana judge said Monday that Rep. Rodney Alexander had tried to manipulate the fall elections by switching to the Republican Party at the last moment and ordered state officials to reopen the ballot so new candidates could enter the race. Alexander, who represents a conservative, mostly rural stretch of northeastern and central Louisiana, caused a furor this month when he changed parties after filing as a Democrat.

A Louisiana judge said Monday that Rep. Rodney Alexander had tried to manipulate the fall elections by switching to the Republican Party at the last moment and ordered state officials to reopen the ballot so new candidates could enter the race. Alexander, who represents a conservative, mostly rural stretch of northeastern and central Louisiana, caused a furor this month when he changed parties after filing as a Democrat.

A judge who has sentenced at least 350 people to attend church was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU challenged the sentence handed to a man accused of drunk driving, saying the punishment violated the separation of church and state. Thomas P. Quirk, Lake Charles City Court judge, ordered Gregory Thompson to attend church once a week for a year on his no-contest plea in 1993. "I'm not going to stop until the courts tell me I've got to," Quirk said.

California auto insurance premiums are among most expensive in the U.S., ranking seventh-highest in a new analysis by Insure.com. But there are worse states to live in in term of auto coverage. It costs more to insure most cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles in Louisiana than in any other state. On average, the cost of an auto insurance premium in Louisiana was $2,699. That's more than Michigan ($2,520), Georgia ($2,155), Oklahoma ($2,074), Washington, D.C. ($2,006) and Montana ($1,914)

In a significant tactical setback for the firearms industry, a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday turned aside an industry request that he take jurisdiction in a lawsuit brought against handgun manufacturers, distributors and dealers by Los Angeles and other Southern California cities. The ruling was the industry's fourth legal defeat in preliminary skirmishes with municipalities around the country in recent weeks. Federal judges in Louisiana, Michigan and Florida have turned aside similar industry attempts to transfer state court lawsuits brought by other municipalities to federal courts, said Jonathan Selbin, a private attorney whose firm represents many of the cities involved.

Seventy-two Nobel Prize winners in science urged the Supreme Court on Monday to reject a Louisiana law calling for "balanced treatment" of evolution and creationism in public schools. In its new term that begins this fall, the Supreme Court will rule directly on the issue for the first time in the 50-year-old legal clash between creation and evolution. The Nobel winners said the case is crucial for American science.

The Supreme Court, acting in a Louisiana case with far-reaching implications for civil rights and politics, said Friday that it would rule on whether the Constitution allows lawmakers to use the race of voters as a criterion for drawing electoral boundaries.

Two years ago, 39 blacks were elected to the House of Representatives, a historic high-water mark that civil rights advocates saw as a culmination of the Voting Rights Act. Not only were blacks in the South finally guaranteed the right to vote, but a series of 1982 amendments to the law assured that electoral boundaries were drawn so that they had a real chance "to elect representatives of their choice."