A Caddo Commissioner’s lawsuit against the mayor and city of Shreveport over enforcement of trespassing law has failed on appeal.
Commissioner John-Paul Young’s lawsuit asking a court to affirm his interpretation of the law governing the arrest of trespassers, about which Mayor Tom Arceneaux disagrees, didn’t sway the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a district court’s ruling Wednesday.
Neither the district court, which ruled last September, nor the Second Circuit ruled on the lawsuit’s merits. Both found Young lacked standing to bring the case, with the appellate court upholding the lower court’s ruling on preemptory exceptions presented by Arceneaux’s attorneys.
The lawsuit
Young sued the city and the mayor in February 2025 over a policy that disallowed Shreveport police from arresting people trespassing in vacant homes without the owner requesting they do so. His lawsuit claimed the policy was responsible for a rash of fires in his neighborhood…