A federal judge in Baton Rouge this week expressed sympathy for the funding plight of New Orleans’ public defenders, but dismissed a lawsuit brought against the office by the American Civil Liberties Union that hoped to force the state to rectify budget inadequacies for indigent defense under court order.

U.S. District Judge James J. Brady of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled Tuesday (Jan. 31) that his court must abstain from trying to resolve the funding crisis, despite what he called in his 13-page judgment “the undisputed inadequacies of a state funding system.”

“It is clear that the Louisiana legislature is failing miserably at upholding its obligations” to provide lawyers for defendants unable to afford private counsel, Brady wrote. “Budget shortages are no excuse to violate the United States Constitution. The legislature must resolve the crisis and locate a stable source of funding.”

The Orleans Public Defenders office is funded through a combination of city appropriations, allocations from the state Public Defender Board and an annual allotted portion of fines and fees raised from traffic violators and other defendants. But diminished local traffic-ticket revenue over recent years has thrown several public defenders offices around the state into fiscal crisis, resulting in waitlisted defendants, hiring freezes, lawyer and investigator layoffs and other austerity measures.

The ACLU’s class-action lawsuit was brought Jan. 14, 2016, against Orleans Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton’s office and the Louisiana Public Defender Board, in the hopes that a federal court order would compel the state to better fund them both.

But Brady stopped short of the type of injunctive relief the plaintiffs sought, expressing concerns about federal interference into state court matters and an aversion to becoming “the overseer of the Orleans Parish criminal court system.”

“The plaintiffs have characterized their requested relief in this way: ‘They seek an order from the federal court recognizing that waiting lists are unconstitutional and ordering defendants to develop and implement a plan to provide them with competent counsel,'” Brady wrote. “On its face, an injunction that requires the defendants to ‘implement a plan’ to provide the class with competent counsel may seem innocuous enough. But what would happen if the defendants failed to implement the plan? Would this Court have to order attorneys for certain indigents? To what extent would this court be encroaching upon the role of the state judges in individual prosecutions? What if the defendants were nominally complying with the order by assigning counsel to indigents but those attorneys were not ‘competent?

“The court declines to issue injunctive relief because it will inevitably lead this court to engage in an ongoing audit of the criminal cases in Orleans Parish. … Although the plaintiffs’ goals are laudable, the court is unable to surmount the difficult federalism obstacles that any grant of relief in this case would necessarily entail.”

Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said, “The court in this decision let the state off on a technicality, but agreed that the Louisiana system for funding public defenders is a violation of the constitutional rights of those held without benefit of counsel. We’re evaluating our options for the future.”

Brady wrote that his court “does not have the remedial tools to resolve the funding crisis,” nor was it “the correct forum to remedy this serious systemic problem.” The federal judge instead pointed a finger back to the Baton Rouge statehouse.

“This court has faith that the state court criminal judges will do their best to uphold the constitutional rights of the defendants on the waitlist,” Brady wrote. “But the judges can only offer temporary relief in this crisis. Lasting relief will only come when the legislature locates an adequate source of funding for public defense offices.”