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Cade Cole becomes Louisiana’s newest Supreme Court justice without opposition • Louisiana Illuminator

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lailluminator.com – Julie O’Donoghue – 2025-02-03 12:26:00

Cade Cole becomes Louisiana’s newest Supreme Court justice without opposition

by Julie O’Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
February 3, 2025

State tax Judge Cade Cole will automatically become the newest member of the Louisiana Supreme Court after being the only candidate to sign up last week for an election to fill the court’s open seat. He will represent District 3, which stretches from Calcasieu Parish to Caddo Parish.

At 42 years old, Cole will be the youngest of the seven justices on the bench. The court’s elected terms last 10 years, but judges are not allowed to run for the office again once they reach the age of 70. 

In an interview Sunday, the incoming justice said his swearing-in date hadn’t been scheduled yet.

The Calcasieu Parish resident is a Republican and member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that is a powerhouse in national GOP politics.

At home in Louisiana, Cole has been a behind-the-scenes operator in state judicial elections, federal judicial appointments, political redistricting and tax policy.

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“We need to defend the constitution,” Cole said of the state Supreme Court’s role in government. “It’s not our job to be a super legislature. … We need to stay in our lane.”

Since 2013, Cole has been Louisiana’s part-time state and local tax judge, where he rules on tax disputes and is one of three members of the Board of State Tax Appeals. Cole was initially appointed to the job by former Gov. Bobby Jindal and then reappointed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards. 

The incoming justice also works as an attorney for local municipalities. He is the city attorney for Sulphur and Vinton and was the city magistrate of DeQuincy, where Cole grew up. He also helps cities, parishes and school boards draw their political districts as a contract lawyer.

Tax Judge Cade Cole will be Louisiana’s newest state Supreme Court justice. (Photo provided by Cole)

 

“He’s one of the brightest individuals I’ve ever known,” said Sulphur Mayor Mike Danahay. “We’re very pleased that he’s been elected.”

A graduate of Tulane University Law School, Cole worked as an assistant district attorney in Calcasieu Parish, where he said he focused on appellate cases.

He received widespread support and endorsements for his supreme court candidacy from several elected officials in the district he will represent on the court.

“I’ve tried to work hard and be fair to everybody, Republicans and Democrats,” he said. 

Attorney General Liz Murrill formally endorsed Cole and Gov. Jeff Landry’s political action committee, CAJUN PAC II, donated $5,000 to his campaign. 

Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Stephen Dwight also said he happily supported Cole in the race.

“He’s well respected by both sides [of the political spectrum],” said Dwight, a Republican. “I think he will hit the ground running.”

Cole is the second justice to join the Louisiana Supreme Court since its political boundaries were redrawn last spring for the first time in over 30 years. The new district lines moved the base of power of his seat from Shreveport to Lake Charles, where Cole lives and works. 

When asked if he helped draw the new Supreme Court map that helped get him elected, Cole replied “not really” and said the map was the product of the justices’ own proposal and changes state lawmakers made.

“The court drew it, and the legislature changed it in a lot of material respects,” he said. “It’s fair to say that I watched it like many other people.” 

The latest map created a new majority-Black district and led to the election of the second Black justice to the seven-person court. John Michael Guidry, a longtime state appellate judge and former Democratic state lawmaker, was sworn into that seat last month

More than 30% of Louisiana’s population identifies as Black, and Cole said he was pleased the Supreme Court political districts were more “reflective of the state population as a whole.”

Cole replaces Justice James Genovese, who stepped down in July after he was picked as the new president of Northwestern State University with the backing of the governor. At the time, Genovese’s job swap raised questions about whether Landry was trying to stack the court with political allies.

Cole said he does not have a personal relationship with the governor, though the two are both active in Republican circles.

Cole also served as a member of the Northwestern State presidential search committee that eventually recommended Genovese for the higher education  job.

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Cole said he was picked for the presidential search committee not because of his interest in the Supreme Court seat but because he is considered a state expert in financing college athletics. He helped set up a collective for McNeese State University that leverages name image and likeness deals for college athlete recruitment.

“I’ve been involved in other presidential searches for the UL System,” he said.

Since Genovese stepped down, retired Justice Jeannette Theriot Knoll has been filling in on the Supreme Court in his absence. Cole worked as a law clerk for Knoll at the Supreme Court early in his legal career and said he expects the transition between the two judges to be smooth.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

OPPJ Comprehensive Plan

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www.youtube.com – KTVE – 2025-09-10 21:15:08

SUMMARY: The Ouachita Parish Police Jury is conducting a series of community meetings to gather public input for their comprehensive plan guiding future growth. Police Jury members, including Larry Bratton from District D, emphasize the importance of reflecting residents’ voices in the master plan. Community members participated in interactive stations, allocating resources to priorities like infrastructure and downtown development, to help shape goals for the next 2, 5, and 20 years. Landscape architect Matt Pizatella and partners from Atlas support the effort. Bratton stresses that without proactive planning, the parish risks costly and less beneficial outcomes in the long term.

OPPJ Comprehensive Plan

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Drowned child recovers thanks to oxygen chamber, but insurance did not approve

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www.youtube.com – WWLTV – 2025-09-09 19:20:27

SUMMARY: In 2018, Will Boyton’s 3-year-old son, Robert, drowned and was without oxygen for nearly an hour. Despite hospitals urging them to give up hope, Will insisted on hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment, inspired by its success in brain injury cases. Robert began treatments at Harch Hyperbarics, showing rapid improvement: from unresponsive and bent backward to recognizing family and laughing within days. Over years, combined with stem cell therapy, Robert vastly surpassed his initial brain-dead prognosis. Though studies and treatments show promise in severe brain injuries, insurance refuses to reimburse these costly treatments, as the FDA hasn’t approved them.

For years, Medical Watch has covered adults and children with brain injuries, coming to New Orleans from around the world, for a treatment considered controversial.

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Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets

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lailluminator.com – Kevin Hardy – 2025-09-09 09:00:00


Since the 2018 Supreme Court ruling legalizing sports betting, states like Maryland and New Jersey have seen a surge in wagering, with new concerns over proposition (“prop”) bets. Prop bets, wagering on specific player stats or in-game events, are popular but raise issues of gambling addiction, player harassment, and game integrity. New Jersey Assemblymember Dan Hutchison has introduced legislation to ban live in-game prop bets due to financial harms and addiction risks. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine advocates an outright ban following suspicious betting incidents involving MLB players. While the industry warns that bans risk pushing bettors to illegal markets, sports leagues support restrictions on certain prop bets to protect athletes and game fairness.

by Kevin Hardy, Louisiana Illuminator
September 9, 2025

As a bankruptcy attorney, New Jersey Assemblymember Dan Hutchison said he sees clients “all the time” whose betting on football and baseball quickly leads to missed car payments, delinquent mortgages and, ultimately, bankruptcy.

The rise of live, in-game bets — in which a gambler could place more than 200 individual bets during a baseball game if they wager on each pitch thrown — has only amplified his misgivings.

“And I’m like, are you kidding me? I mean, they’re betting on the next pitch, the next play, and it’s constant,” he said. “There’s no pause. It’s just not healthy.”

Worried that those bets can worsen problem gambling and threaten the integrity of sports, Hutchison, a Democrat, introduced legislation to ban New Jersey gambling licensees from offering live bets on individual plays during sporting events.

That bill illustrates growing state interest in regulating proposition bets, commonly called prop bets, a form of sports betting that is popular with fans but worrisome for sports leagues and state officials nationwide.

Unlike wagering on which team will win or the point spread of a game, prop bets can center on the performance of an individual player or even a single play that doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome of a contest. Prop bets can include trivia, such as the color of the Gatorade dumped over the Super Bowl’s winning coach, or specific stats, like how many touchdowns a certain quarterback will score during a game or which team will score first.

Critics say prop bets are easier for athletes to manipulate than the outcome of an entire game. They also make individual players more susceptible to online harassment from gamblers and increase the frequency of betting, thus raising the risk of addiction.

Ohio’s Republican governor has called for the nation’s first outright ban on prop betting on professional sports. Already, at least 15 states ban prop betting in collegiate sports, according to data maintained by the American Gaming Association, a trade group.

The heightened focus on prop bets comes amid a rapid rise of legal sports gambling, which is operational in 38 states and the District of Columbia. (Missouri plans to launch its new voter-approved program this December.) While legal betting has boosted state revenues and reshaped sports fandom, Hutchison said bankruptcy attorneys across the country are getting a preview of the financial wreckage it can wreak.

He said some clients are so distraught, he worries about potential suicides related to out-of-control gambling debts.

“That’s the reality of what’s going on. But they don’t make it seem like that when they’re doing these commercials during the football games: It’s normal, everybody does it, if you don’t do it, you’re not enjoying yourself,” he said. “That’s the glamour side of it. I deal with the other side.”

The industry’s rapid rise

The liberalization of sports gambling was made possible by a 2018 Supreme Court decision to strike down a federal law prohibiting gambling.

Since then, legal gambling has transformed the fan experience and propelled sportsbooks into major industry players: Americans are expected to wager an estimated $30 billion in legal sports betting on the NFL this season, according to the American Gaming Association. With so much money and energy flowing into gambling, academic researchers are increasingly raising concerns about the mental and financial consequences.

“The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set to protect consumers and to try to give resources for problem gambling,” said Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling.

Shapiro said a potential ban on prop betting in Ohio would prove a “big step” in gambling regulation. But he expects fierce opposition from the industry and consumers alike.

“They’re very popular. They’re arguably as — if not more — popular than betting on just individual games,” he said. “ … So I think there’ll be some backlash, but I also think over the next few years … there’s going to be an appetite for setting guardrails.”

The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set.

– Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling

The American Gaming Association, which represents casinos and sportsbooks, says that such restrictions would only drive gambling to illegal venues such as offshore betting platforms, where consumers have no protections.

But some sports leagues are ready for more restrictions on prop bets. The NCAA, the governing body for major college athletics, has been pushing federal and state leaders to ban prop betting in college sports.

The organization says 1 in 3 high-profile college athletes has received abusive messages from gamblers — the majority directed toward basketball players during tournament season. Just 12 days after North Carolina legalized sports betting last year — including prop bets on players — the University of North Carolina’s Armando Bacot reported receiving more than a hundred abusive social media messages for not accumulating enough rebounds in a game.

Women’s basketball student-athletes received about three times the number of threats as men’s basketball student-athletes, according to the NCAA.

In a March awareness campaign, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the abuse threatens the well-being of student-athletes and the overall environment of college sports.

“We need fans to do better,” he said in a statement at the time. “We need states to do better and ban player props that target student-athletes and enable detrimental abuse.”

And professional teams have their own concerns. Last month, ESPN reported the NBA and its players union supported further limits on certain prop bets. This summer, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters he would like to see some limits on prop bets.

“There are certain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable,” Manfred said, according to Yahoo Sports.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants to ban prop bets after gambling allegations against Guardians players

In late July, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called on state regulators to outright ban all prop bets — a request he asked the professional sports leagues to support.

DeWine’s proposal followed the suspensions of Cleveland Guardians’ pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase, who are being investigated by MLB. A sports betting integrity firm reportedly flagged two specific pitches Ortiz threw in early June that coincided with a pair of prop bets.

“The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm,” DeWine said in a July news release. “The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly.”

The Ohio Casino Control Commission, which regulates sports betting, did not answer Stateline’s questions about the governor’s request. On Aug. 13, the agency said its investigation into the suspicious betting on the Guardians was ongoing.

In a statement responding to DeWine, the American Gaming Association said the Ohio incident is actually evidence that regulated gambling works: “It detects potential misconduct, it reports it, and it helps hold bad actors accountable,” said Joe Maloney, the association’s senior vice president of strategic communications.

In an interview, Maloney said eliminating legal prop betting will only move that activity into unregulated markets with no transparency. He said prop bets are a reflection of sports fandom: Bettors like to wager on their favorite players notching touchdowns or 3-pointers.

“It increases a fan’s engagement with the game they love, with the player they love. And so the idea that eliminating a legal betting market for someone really interested in increasing the level of engagement is going to prevent that activity, it’s just not the case,” Maloney said. “ … It simply will just move the activity into the shadows.”

Leagues endorse some limits

But the leagues are pushing for certain parts of the game to remain off-limits in legal betting markets.

Major League Soccer, for example, successfully pushed Illinois regulators last year to ban wagering on whether yellow and red penalty cards will be shown during a match and whether a specific player will receive a yellow or red card penalty.

Similarly, the state in February banned prop bets on NFL player injuries, player misconduct, officiating assignments, replay results and the first play of the game, following lobbying from the league.

Illinois Gaming Board spokesperson Beth Kaufman told Stateline the regulatory agency doesn’t maintain a list of specific prop bets that are allowed. But the board does require licensees to receive approval from the agency for specific wagers offered, she said.

“The IGB regularly monitors ongoing trends and developments in the industry and in major sports for any possible impact to the integrity of sports wagering in Illinois,” she said in a statement.

The NFL has pushed for similar rule changes in other states.

During a late August news briefing on gambling, David Highhill, the league’s vice president for sports betting, said the NFL has consistently objected to certain bets that raise integrity risks and provide limited fan engagement. Those include bets about officiating or player injuries and bets that are controllable by a single player on a single play.

“So things like ‘will this kicker miss a field goal’ are things that we’ve worked collaboratively across the board with operators to make sure those types of wagers are not offered,” he said.

In New Jersey, Hutchison said he doesn’t want to ban all sports betting or even all prop bets. And he knows his bill targeting so-called micro bets — those live, play-by-play bets — will face opposition, both from the industry and sports gamblers.

An avid sports fan himself, he said he doesn’t waste his money gambling on his beloved Philadelphia Eagles: “They don’t build all of those casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas because they pay out winners,” he said.

He said he’s not looking to end legal sports betting, but does think New Jersey needs to instill consumer protections and have a meaningful policy conversation about the societal costs of gambling.

New Jersey lawmakers are also considering a separate bill to ban player-specific prop bets on college sports.

The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey says it has experienced a nearly 300% increase in calls to its problem gambling hotline since the Garden State launched legal sports gambling in 2018.

In a July statement, Luis Del Orbe, executive director of the nonprofit council, which contracts with the state on gambling addiction issues, urged lawmakers to approve the bill to ban live, in-game bets. The organization says those high-frequency bets can trigger instant dopamine releases in the brain’s reward system, fostering compulsive behaviors that can lead to addiction.

“By limiting the proliferation of micro betting, this legislation takes an essential step toward protecting citizens from the harmful effects of reckless gambling practices,” Del Orbe’s statement said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Louisiana Illuminator, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

The post Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets appeared first on lailluminator.com



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content presents a balanced view on the issue of sports betting regulation, highlighting concerns about problem gambling and the social costs associated with certain types of bets, particularly prop bets. It features perspectives from Democratic lawmakers advocating for consumer protections and regulation, as well as industry representatives warning against overregulation. The article also references bipartisan actions, including Republican officials supporting bans on specific bets. Overall, the piece leans slightly left by emphasizing public health and regulatory measures but maintains a generally centrist tone by including multiple viewpoints and avoiding partisan rhetoric.

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