More Louisiana officials can shield their home addresses, ethics board decides

by Julie O’Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
February 28, 2025

The Louisiana Board of Ethics will allow statewide elected officials and more high-ranking government employees to keep their home addresses off forms posted online. 

A state law requires home addresses for 33 state elected officials and high-ranking appointees to be included in paperwork that’s posted on the ethics board’s public website. Board members determined earlier this month a state constitutional right to privacy overrides that obligation. 

Last year, the board’s staff redacted the home addresses of five executive office employees who work for Gov. Jeff Landry. The new ruling will allow 28 more high-ranking officials to keep their home addresses off the ethics board website if they request it.

Those who can now ask for their addresses to be redacted include: the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, insurance commissioner, agriculture commissioner, cabinet secretaries, the Public Service Commission executive director, the Civil Service Commission director, the state education superintendent, higher education commissioner and presidents of the state’s four public university and college systems. 

These officials are in a small group legally required to submit Tier 1 personal financial disclosure paperwork with their residencies explicitly listed. Hundreds of other elected officials and public employees have to file Tier 2 or lower disclosure forms that don’t require a home address. 

Even if addresses are blacked out on the website version of the Tier 1 officials’ disclosure forms, the public might still be able to access the information. State ethics administrator David Bordelon said copies with the addresses still visible will be available through public records requests. 

Ethics Board member Vanessa Guidry-Whipple pushed hard for the home addresses to come down off the board’s website. She served for decades as a judge on Louisiana’s 1st Circuit Court of Appeals and said she knows other women judges who have been physically threatened. 

In Louisiana, judges are not required to disclose where they live on public government forms. Ethics board members such as Guidry-Whipple also don’t have to reveal their home addresses on personal financial disclosure paperwork that’s posted online. 

Nevertheless, Guidry-Whipple was uncomfortable with making other officials share such personal information.

“I don’t like my home address floating out there at large for the world to see,” Guidry-Whipple said during a Feb. 4 ethics board meeting.

Board member La Koshia Roberts disagreed with her colleagues’ stance. She doesn’t think the board has the authority to conceal home addresses on the disclosure forms. It would have to wait for state lawmakers to change the law to do so.

“We are not the legislative body. We don’t write the law. We don’t have the pen,” Roberts said. 

Guidry-Whipple said an opinion Attorney General Liz Murrill issued provides the justification the board needs to offer redactions to officials who request them. It concluded the right to privacy included in the Louisiana Constitution would nullify any ethics statute that requires a home address to be released. 

“We have some legal coverage in the AG’s opinion, in my opinion, but we do need some clarification from the legislature,” said Guidry-Whipple, who Landry appointed to the ethics board in January. 

The ethics board voted 7-5 to broaden access to the redactions, with all of the members Landry appointed last month favoring the new policy.

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.

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