Louisiana’s Judicial Compensation Commission met Monday in Baton Rouge, and after a long, at times complicated discussion, commissioners voted to recommend a major pay raise for Louisiana judges, adopting economist Dr. Loren Scott’s preferred model of a “catch-up” increase now, followed by automatic annual raises tied to inflation.
I told you last week that this meeting was unfolding under unusual pressure, and Monday’s discussion more or less confirmed it. Years of internal conflict inside the judiciary, new scrutiny of recent stipends and supplements, and widespread confusion about how to decide how much judges get paid all hung in the room. The meeting didn’t resolve those tensions, but it did move the numbers.
Dr. Loren Scott presented four possible paths for adjusting salaries but made his recommendation clear: judicial pay should keep pace with inflation. The Commission voted to adopt that approach.
Under Scott’s projections, Supreme Court justices would see roughly a $27,000 increase in 2026, followed by about $6,000 in 2027 and $4,800 in 2028, with proportional increases for appellate and district judges. These raises come on the heels of two notable boosts: a $14,000–$17,000 lump-sum stipend issued last year and another taxable supplement this year.
A note about that “taxable supplement:” Unlike the lump-sum stipend, whose amount was fixed in legislation and widely reported, the amount of this year’s ‘supplement’ is not stated in any of the Commission or Court materials released to the public. It was most likely around $1,200, which, if accurate, is not a significant amount for officials earning between $169,000 and $197,000. But without explicit documentation, that’s only an inference. That deliberate lack of clarity is itself part of the transparency problem that Chief Justice Weimer has been hollering about.
Both the stipend and the supplement significantly increased overall compensation and counted toward retirement. That’s confusing at first blush - even though they were described as “one-time,” they were processed as regular salary for the purposes of calculating pension - and because judicial pensions are based on a judge’s highest-earning years, those one-time payments effectively raised lifetime retirement benefits. It’s like staying one night at a really fancy hotel and then saying your “average housing cost” tripled.
Dr. Scott’s formula to determine the recommendation did not include either the stipend or the supplement. His calculations focused only on base salary and long-term trends, excluding the recent boosts (even though they increased take-home pay and permanently increased judge’s pensions). That omission is central to this long-standing dispute inside the judiciary, and Monday’s meeting did not directly address it.
The commissioners did otherwise push back and ask substantive questions. Commissioner J.R. Ball asked if those recent stipends were structured to avoid long-term pension impacts (they were not). Senator Greg Miller replied that lawmakers wanted flexibility while they gathered more information - though the study that would have yielded that information was ultimately vetoed by the Governor. So judges received additional pay without any external requirement to prove they really needed it.
Chief Justice John Weimer was first to speak, as the only member of the judiciary who has been consistently raising red flags about all this and pressing for changes. He did not take a position on the exact size of the raise in question but simply emphasized three principles: fiscal responsibility to taxpayers; integrity, impartiality, and independence of the judiciary; and transparency regarding how public money flows through the court system.
Associate Justice John Michael Guidry urged the Commission to support a substantial raise, arguing that judges perform demanding work in a difficult political environment and can earn far more in private practice. No one on the Commission disputed that point, and no justice offered a counterargument during the meeting. “We are way, way out of whack,” Guidry said. His comments clearly landed; no commissioner voiced opposition.
The Commission made their recommendation, and now the Legislature will decide to adopt, modify, or reject it during the upcoming session in March. Historically, lawmakers have been receptive to judicial pay increases, even when publicly ambivalent so there’s not much mystery there. What remains uncertain is whether legislators will revisit the transparency issues left unresolved by both Scott’s report and the Commission discussion: how recent stipends should factor into the baseline, how raises interact with lifetime pension formulas, and whether any judicial workload study should be revived.
Two things were clear after Monday’s meeting: judges are almost certainly going to get a raise, and the broader fight over how their pay is calculated and explained to the public is far from over.
The Commission has made its move. What lawmakers do with it, and whether the recent stipends finally get treated as part of the real picture, will decide whether this system becomes clearer or stays as murky as ever.