Judge Steven Tureau Resigns Over Unfiled Tax Returns

The Certification That Ended His Candidacy

Louisiana makes every candidate for office sign something that most states do not. Under La. R.S. 18:463(A)(2)(a)(iv), the notice of candidacy includes a certification that for each of the previous five tax years the candidate has filed his federal and state income tax returns, has filed for an extension of time for filing either his federal or state income tax return or both, or was not required to file either a federal or state income tax return or both. Three ways to satisfy it. Sign it falsely and the false certification is its own ground for objection: La. R.S. 18:492(A)(7) lets a challenger attack the candidacy of a defendant who falsely certified on that exact question, separately from the general ground in subsection (A)(3) that the candidate does not meet the qualifications for the office.

The objection was filed on August 14, 2026 in the 23rd Judicial District Court by Robert Snyder Jr., the only other candidate for the Division D seat, together with a co-petitioner who is referred to here by role. The dispute was not about whether Tureau owed money or had cheated anyone. It was narrower and, for a sitting judge, more awkward: whether he had actually filed the state returns he certified he had.

The answer, as the courts found it, runs year by year. A 2021 state return was filed. For 2022, 2023 and 2024 the Louisiana Department of Revenue could not confirm that any state return had been filed, and an affidavit from the department reported that he had not filed a state return since 2022. For 2025 an automatic extension was still running, so that year could not support the objection. Three years, then, carried the disqualification. His accountant produced evidence of federal extensions covering multiple years.

Why the Extension Did Not Save Him

Tureau’s position rested on the middle option in the statute. The text says the candidate certifies that he has filed for an extension of time for filing. It says nothing about the extension still being alive, nothing about a return eventually following, and nothing about what happens when an extension period runs out. Read literally, having once filed for an extension satisfies the clause. An ad hoc trial judge, Paul Bonin, read it that way after an August 18 hearing at the St. James Parish courthouse and left Tureau on the ballot.

The Fifth Circuit reversed six days later: once the extension period runs out with no return filed, the extension is void and cannot carry the certification. An extension is permission to file late, not permission not to file. Read that way, the three options in the statute collapse to two for anyone whose extension has already lapsed.

Notice what that requires. The condition the court enforced is not in the sentence the candidate signs. The court supplied it from the purpose of the provision, which is a perfectly ordinary move in statutory construction and also the reason this case drew a dissent and a trial judge going the other way. Not every judge on the panel agreed; the dissent took the view that the statute was ambiguous enough to leave him on the ballot. The court also refused Tureau’s request to recover his legal fees from the challengers.

He applied to the Louisiana Supreme Court on August 26, arguing among other things that no later judgment can fully restore the status quo. The court denied the application on August 27, which made the disqualification final and took him off the November 3 ballot. He was, however, still a judge, with more than three months left in his term and a separate proceeding waiting.

The Separate Case He Was Still Facing

The Judiciary Commission’s charges grew out of a single evening, and they make more sense once you know what was in the background. Tureau was reported to have been in private negotiations with one of the two co-owners of a daiquiri bar in Gonzales about buying out the other. The co-owner he was negotiating against is the one he ended up confronting. Without that, the case reads as a bar scuffle. With it, it reads as a judge with a financial interest on one side of an ownership dispute walking up to the person on the other side.

On February 12, 2023, Tureau and his wife were at the bar. His wife and a companion were moved to the back of the building after causing a nuisance near the band and complaining about that co-owner. Tureau then confronted her. The other co-owner began pushing him away, a scuffle followed, and it ended with Tureau and his wife on the ground outside among the trash cans. The Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office responded and took it no further. No arrest was made and no criminal charge was ever brought against anyone, which left the judicial conduct process as the only forum that was ever going to examine this.

The Commission accused him of misusing the prestige of his office and of conduct not befitting a judge, and set a hearing for September 2026. Note what the Commission can and cannot do in Louisiana: it does not impose discipline itself, it recommends a sanction to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and the range runs up to removal. The charge document is not public, and the reporting on the charges is the fullest public account of them.

His answer drew a careful line. He denied intending to invoke or exercise any actual judicial power or influence against the co-owner or her business, while acknowledging that his conduct could have been perceived as threatening. That is a familiar and often honest defense to a prestige-of-office charge: the judge did not pull rank, but everyone in the room knew who he was.

None of it was ever adjudicated. The Commission had filed charges and a hearing was set for September 2026, but no findings were made, no recommendation reached the Louisiana Supreme Court, and no sanction was ever imposed. The parties other than Tureau are referred to here by role rather than by name; they are private citizens who did not choose to be in a judicial ethics file.

Resigning Before the Hearing

Tureau’s stated reason was his family. He described a son coming home upset after someone at school asked him about the tax filings and the legal challenge, and said that was the moment he decided, in his words, enough was enough. He added that if it had been only himself at stake he would have fought it to the end, and that he told his lawyers to stop. His lawyer had earlier called the disqualification the biggest travesty of justice he had seen in a long time. The resignation letter was dated Friday, September 25, the Secretary of State’s office confirmed receiving it, he announced it in a video on September 30, and it took effect Saturday, October 3.

Whatever the motive, the effect is the one this series keeps running into. A judge who leaves office takes the disciplinary case with him, because the entire machinery is aimed at a judicial seat the person no longer holds. Local reporting treats the resignation as ending the Commission proceeding. The pattern is everywhere in the Gavel of Shame files: Case File No. 41, where a Florida judge resigned after the state’s Supreme Court rejected a proposed reprimand as too light; Case File No. 49, where a sitting chief justice resigned under a stipulation that at least recorded his admissions first; and in Texas, where a Bexar County judge resigned in 2026 under a voluntary agreement in lieu of disciplinary action, with no admission of wrongdoing and no finding either way.

There is a real argument that this is fine. The public purpose is getting an unfit judge off the bench, and resignation accomplishes that faster and cheaper than a contested hearing. There is an equally real argument that it is not, because the record never gets made, the complainants never get an answer, and a lawyer who left the bench under a cloud is still a lawyer. Both can be true at once, and Louisiana’s law license discipline runs on an entirely separate track from its judicial discipline.

How It Works in Texas

Texas has no tax-filing certification for candidates, so the specific trap Tureau fell into does not exist here. Texas judicial eligibility runs instead on citizenship, residency, age and a license: a Texas district judge must be a citizen, a resident of the district, and a practicing lawyer or judge for at least four years. Those are challengeable in roughly the same way, by someone with standing inside a narrow pre-election window, and they are just as indifferent to whether the judge is any good.

On the discipline side, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct sanctions judges on its own up to public censure and refers removal to a separate Review Tribunal of appellate justices. It also has a tool Louisiana’s Commission does not use the same way: a voluntary agreement to resign from judicial office in lieu of disciplinary action. That document ends the case without any finding, but unlike a bare resignation it carries a lifetime bar from serving as a judge in Texas again. For the full walk-through of the Texas process, see our explainer.

A judge who simply quits in the middle of a Texas disciplinary case can, in principle, run again. A judge who signs the agreement cannot. It is the closest thing in the Texas system to making a resignation count for something.

Two Tracks, Two Endings

How It Played in the Press

WAFB’s I-Team drove this story from the candidacy challenge through the resignation and had the interview in which Tureau explained his decision. WBRZ carried the most detail on the Fifth Circuit’s tax reasoning and broke the Judiciary Commission charges, including the buyout negotiation that gives the prestige-of-office count its shape. The Advocate and L’Observateur covered both threads locally, and L’Observateur has the clearest year-by-year account of what the Department of Revenue could and could not confirm.

Where Things Stand Now

Tureau has been off the bench since October 3, 2026. The Louisiana Supreme Court appoints an ad hoc judge to carry Division D until January 2027, when the only other candidate for the seat takes office. With Tureau’s name removed, that candidate stands unopposed on the November 3 ballot, which means the objection did not just end a reelection bid; it decided the race. The misconduct charges end without a decision, and no finding of judicial misconduct was ever entered against him. He has said he intends to speak publicly about the process now that he is no longer a judge.

Two things are worth watching: Whether anything follows on the law license side, which is a separate proceeding with separate rules, and whether the Fifth Circuit’s holding on lapsed extensions gets applied to other Louisiana candidates. It narrows a certification option that a lot of people have probably relied on casually, and it does so by adding a condition the statute does not state. If either develops, the Gavel of Shame will follow up.

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCES

• La. R.S. 18:463, notice of candidacy, including the five-year tax-filing certification at subsection (A)(2)(a)(iv). legis.la.gov
• La. R.S. 18:492, grounds for an objection to candidacy, including the false tax certification ground at subsection (A)(7). legis.la.gov
• Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, public case search. The court’s opinion in the candidacy challenge was not retrievable: a litigant-name search for 2026 returns no records, and the ruling, the panel and the dissent are therefore reported from contemporaneous news accounts rather than from the opinion. fifthcircuit.org

NEWS COVERAGE

• WAFB I-Team, Judge Steven Tureau resigns and says impact on his children was enough (Sept. 30, 2026), for the resignation dates, his explanation and the effect on the Judiciary Commission case. wafb.com
• WAFB I-Team, Louisiana Supreme Court denies Ascension judge’s appeal (Aug. 27, 2026), for the writ denial, the Department of Revenue affidavit and the quoted language from his application. wafb.com
• WAFB I-Team, Ascension judge appeals disqualification to the Louisiana Supreme Court (Aug. 26, 2026). wafb.com
• WAFB I-Team, Lawsuit challenges candidacy of sitting Ascension Parish judge (Aug. 14, 2026), for the filing of the objection. wafb.com
• WBRZ, Fifth Circuit disqualifies 23rd JDC judge candidate over missing state tax returns, for the extension reasoning, the dissent and the denial of fees. wbrz.com
• WBRZ, 23rd JDC judge to be taken off ballot, state Supreme Court decides. wbrz.com
• L’Observateur, Fifth Circuit disqualifies Tureau from November ballot (Aug. 25, 2026), for the August 18 trial hearing, the ad hoc judge and the year-by-year tax findings. lobservateur.com
• L’Observateur, Tureau resigns from 23rd JDC judgeship (Sept. 30, 2026). lobservateur.com
• The Advocate, Ascension judge resigns from bench after his election disqualification over tax filings. theadvocate.com
• The Advocate, on the reversal of the trial court ruling, for the tax years 2022 through 2024. theadvocate.com
• WBRZ, 23rd JDC judge facing misconduct charges after 2023 dispute with part-owner of Gonzales bar, for the formal charges, the buyout negotiation, the account of the February 12, 2023 incident, the sheriff’s response and his denial. wbrz.com

REFERENCE

• Deandra Grant Law, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com
• Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, how to file a complaint against a Texas judge. scjc.texas.gov

• This post summarizes Louisiana statutory text, publicly filed judicial-conduct charges and news reporting as of November 1, 2026, and is not legal advice. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion in the candidacy challenge was not retrievable from the court’s own public case search, so the ruling, the composition of the panel, the dissent and the denial of fees are reported from contemporaneous news accounts and the docket number is not stated. The tax years are those reported by the courts through that coverage, drawing on a Louisiana Department of Revenue affidavit; an earlier version of this file did not enumerate them because the available reports conflicted. The reading that a lapsed extension cannot satisfy the certification is the Fifth Circuit’s holding; the observation that the statutory text does not itself state that condition is our own analysis. The Judiciary Commission’s charges against Judge Tureau were never adjudicated and no finding of misconduct was entered against him; nothing here should be read as a statement that those allegations were proven. Private individuals involved in the 2023 incident, including both co-owners of the bar, the co-petitioner in the candidacy challenge, and the accountant are referred to by role rather than by name, and the bar itself is not named, although the press identifies all of them; the account of that incident and of the buyout negotiation is drawn from news reporting on charges that were never adjudicated, and the sheriff made no arrest and brought no charge; Robert Snyder Jr. is named because he is a candidate for judicial office.