The Louisiana Supreme Court has taken the extraordinary step of forcibly removing its own chief justice from a pending case after he declined to step aside voluntarily.
The six associate justices voted unanimously to recuse Chief Justice John Weimer, citing a prolonged personal feud with an attorney appearing before the court.
The motion to remove Weimer was brought by attorney Scott Crichton, himself a former associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Crichton cited a series of personal attacks directed at him by Weimer, including two letters sent directly to him outside of normal court proceedings.
The justices described these communications in sharp terms, noting that Weimer had “on his own initiative transmitted a highly vitriolic, written communication, tantamount to a demand letter” to Crichton.
The opinion made clear that these were not routine disagreements but rather an escalating pattern of conduct that the other justices deemed incompatible with Weimer presiding over a matter involving Crichton.
The roots of this dispute stretch back several years, with the court’s internal tensions becoming significant enough to prompt structural changes in how the court was governed.
In 2023, according to the opinion, the six associate justices, “having lost confidence in the Chief Justice,” formed an executive committee that “assumed most of the administrative responsibilities and internal governance of the Court, while the Chief Justice retained his ceremonial duties.”
Crichton was appointed the first chairman of that executive committee, a detail that adds considerable weight to the conflict of interest concerns now formally recognised by the court.
Louisiana’s rules around the chief justiceship create a particularly complicated situation, as the position is automatically granted to the most senior justice, leaving no formal mechanism to replace the holder of the role.
The executive committee arrangement was therefore the only practical route available to the associate justices when they sought to limit Weimer’s administrative influence from 2023 onwards.
The unanimous nature of Tuesday’s vote signals a complete breakdown in confidence between the chief justice and every one of his colleagues currently sitting on the court.
Legal observers have noted that a court forcibly recusing its own chief justice through collective action is an exceptionally rare event in American judicial history.
The case now proceeds without Weimer’s involvement, with the remaining justices taking full responsibility for its outcome following one of the most unusual internal disputes seen in a state supreme court in recent memory.