A district judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit claiming the state is violating the constitutional rights of poor defendants by overburdening their public defenders.

Any adult in the state assigned a public defender is eligible for the class action, except those facing charges punishable by the death penalty.

The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, seeks to overhaul the Louisiana public defender system's high caseloads and its unique reliance on fines from traffic tickets and convictions for its revenue, which can vary unpredictably year to year.

No other state relies primarily on court fees and fines to pay for its public defender system, according to the lawsuit, and the Louisiana Public Defender Board described the money stream as “unreliable, unstable and insufficient” in its 2017 annual report.

“How am I going to say go write more tickets so I can get more money?” said Lafourche Chief Public Defender Mark Plaisance. “I can’t do that, nor will I do that. ... Ultimately, the Legislature is going to have decide, amongst all the other issues, how they are going to fund public defender services.”

However, Plaisance said he had several issues with the lawsuit, including that it mentioned individual districts — including Lafourche Parish — in the complaint.

“There is now a conflict, because how can an attorney go to court to represent an individual who is part of a group that is claiming they are ineffective?” Plaisance said. “It puts the lawyers in an ethical and professional quandary.”

In its argument, the lawsuit notes how some annual revenues for public defender offices are dwarfed by revenues for district attorney offices.

In Lafourche, for example, the Public Defender’s Office has received — for at least the past decade — revenues that equal roughly 20 percent of what the District Attorney’s Office has received. And in Terrebonne, public defenders have typically received revenues amounting to about 30 percent of what the District Attorney’s Office received in the past few years.

However, Plaisance argued the Lafourche Public Defender’s Office hasn’t been ineffective.

“We certainly could use more money -- I’m not going to say we can’t,” Plaisance said. “In Lafourche we run an extremely tight ship. We’re very effective in what we do and what we got.”

Terrebonne Chief Public Defender Anthony Champagne couldn't be reached for comment.

The lawsuit also notes the high caseloads many of the state’s public defenders have.

Although the Louisiana Public Defender Board has adopted maximum caseload standards that are higher than national and some states standards, the lawsuit says “nearly all district defender offices annually exceed LPDB caseload standards.”

In 2017, Lafourche public defenders had about three times the caseloads recommended by the board for each attorney, marking an increase over the office’s 2016 numbers. But it was a drop from a high point in 2012 when attorneys were handling 4.5 times the recommended amount of cases, according to the the state board’s annual report.

But Plaisance said he disagrees with how the state counts caseloads. Rather than count cases per person, he said, the state counts caseloads per charge, meaning someone who was arrested on multiple charges would count as multiple cases.

“I’m not saying we might not be above the curve — we probably are ... (but) you can skew statistics any way you wanted to make your story,” Plaisance said.

And in Terrebonne, public defenders reported handling about 2.3 times more caseloads in 2017 than the state’s recommended level, according the report. Since 2010, the Terrebonne office has reported caseload numbers between 1.48 times and 2.65 times the recommended level.

For the Southern Poverty Law Center, the class action status marks a victory.

“The decision represents a significant step forward in the battle against mass incarceration,” the group wrote on its website. “It is also an unequivocal statement by the Louisiana judiciary that it will not turn a blind eye to the inadequacies of a funding scheme that relies primarily on fines and fees generated through traffic tickets and sentences that are imposed on poor people.”

The case goes to trial in January.

Staff Writer Natalie Schwartz can be reached at 852-2205 or nschwartz@houmatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @nmschwartz23.