This story was originally published by Louisiana Illuminator
Five months before a new privacy law for judges took effect, a Louisiana Supreme Court justice cited it in a request to keep information about his divorce and the end of his 40-year marriage private.
Justice Will Crain asked the state’s 22nd Judicial District Court, where he used to serve as a lower court judge, to seal his divorce records from public view in September 2024. The seal wasn’t lifted until almost a year later in August 2025, following inquiries from a reporter about why the records weren’t publicly available.
The new judicial privacy law, which took effect in February, allows judges living in Louisiana to keep a large swath of personal information, including marital records, out of government databases and off the internet. Judges said the law is needed to ensure their personal safety.
But starting next year, the same privilege will be extended to hundreds of other local and state officials.
Louisiana lawmakers voted last spring to expand the reach of the law to cover themselves, statewide elected officials, public service commissioners, district attorneys, retired district attorneys, assistant district attorneys and district attorney investigators.
Government transparency advocates worry the sweeping measure empowers judges – and soon many more public officials – to hide too much from the voters that put them into office.
“This law is really, really bad. This is one of the worst in the country,” said David Cuillier, director of the Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida.
“Similar provisions have been weaponized in other states,” he said in an interview Monday. “It will be abused. I guarantee.”
The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana wrote in a report that ”the law could easily be exploited to silence an elected official’s critics and hide unsavory information.”
Some details in Crain’s divorce records that were kept from public view – such as the address of his family home – could potentially endanger the justice. But the divorce proceedings were also placed under seal at a crucial time in his career.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he had picked Crain to be a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana. The lifetime appointment, which requires U.S. Senate confirmation, is typically made after several months of scrutinizing a nominee’s professional and personal life. Crain appeared Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for questioning.
In the lead-up to his nomination, Crain has been dating his former Louisiana Supreme Court law clerk, Julie Eldridge, who stopped working for the justice shortly before he filed for divorce last year.
In an interview this month, former Louisiana Supreme Court Justice James Genovese, now the president of Northwestern State University, said Crain and Eldridge are in a romantic relationship.
Other attorneys, judges and people close to the state Supreme Court have also said Crain and Eldridge are dating but declined to comment publicly for this story because it could damage their professional and personal relationships.
Crain and his divorce attorney have not responded to inquiries about his relationship with Eldridge sent through voicemail, text messages and emails since August. Eldridge, who is also divorced, did not respond to phone calls, text messages and an email sent to her over the past two months.
Crain’s ex-wife, Cheri Crain, declined to comment on her divorce. Eldridge’s ex-husband, Gregg Eldridge, did not respond to two voicemails left at his office this month.
A divorce under seal
Eldridge became a member of the Louisiana Supreme Court staff in 2009 and started working in Crain’s office in January 2020, the first year he joined the court.
Eldridge left her job as Crain’s clerk on Aug. 30, 2024, three weeks after she filed for divorce on Aug. 8, 2024, and two weeks before Crain filed for divorce on Sept. 13, 2024, according to their divorce records and her employment history.
They didn’t provide reasons for separating from their spouses in their divorce petitions, and their former spouses’ filings do not include any allegations of infidelity.
In Louisiana, a person isn’t required to give the court an explanation for wanting a divorce.
On the day Crain filed for divorce, Judge William “Billy” Burris of the 22nd District agreed to preemptively put any information about the justice’s divorce proceedings under seal. The move made it likely any filing made in the Crain case, including any filings from Cheri Crain, would not be publicly available.
The records were kept private initially because of concerns about Crain’s personal safety, said Ross Lagarde, the attorney representing the justice in his divorce, in an email in early August. Judges across the country have received threats of violence, and Lagarde said the secrecy allowed Crain to keep information out of the public that would make him vulnerable.
“There was a … concern that in litigation you cannot control the pleadings filed by the opposing party,” Lagarde wrote in an email. “While it did not ultimately occur in this case, the opposing party could have contained Justice Crain’s and/or his family member’s home address or other information.”
The seal removed the listing for the Crain divorce in its entirety from the clerk of court’s public database for nearly a year, until two months after the divorce settlement was signed.
St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court Jessica Jenkins Brewster’s office also initially refused to release details about the divorce filings in paper form when asked in July. After nearly two weeks of questioning, Brewster’s office turned over the docket number and the names of the attorneys representing Will Crain and Cheri Crain.
Leanne Eckholdt, general counsel for the St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court, said her office has had difficulties with its case management system and was forced to remove all listings for sealed cases from its database.
Lagarde cited the 2024 judicial privacy law to argue that the Crains’ divorce proceedings should be shielded from public view.
“If the record is not sealed, opposing counsel could file a pleading or other document containing protected information in violation of the Act and jeopardize the security of Crain or his family,” Lagarde wrote in a request to the court in September 2024.
But the law Lagarde referenced was not in effect at the time of his request. Lawmakers approved that bill in the spring of 2024, but it wasn’t applicable until February 2025 – five months after Lagarde’s letter and the seal on Crain’s divorce records had been granted.
In August, Lagarde offered to let the Illuminator review the divorce documents while under seal as long as “none of the protected information would be published.”
The Illuminator never agreed to Lagarde’s offer. Less than a week later, Crain filed a motion to lift the seal and release the records.
Justices have favored disclosure for divorce records for public figures
In 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court decided that lower courts should not have allowed Popeyes founder Al Copeland Sr. and his fourth wife, Jennifer Devall Copeland, to seal their divorce record.
“A party’s claim of mere ‘annoyance, embarrassment, oppression or undue burden or expense’ is not enough to overcome the public’s right of access to public records,” wrote Justice Jeffrey Victory, who retired in 2014 and died last year, in the court’s opinion on the Copeland case.
The Copelands requested the seal to protect the emotional well-being and safety of their children. The Times-Picayune sued to unseal the records, arguing there was public interest in their divorce.
The court sided with the newspaper. Justices reviewed the sealed records and determined general information provided about the child custody arrangement didn’t justify secrecy.
Open court records guard against favoritism and misconduct in the judicial system, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, who retired in 2020, wrote in a concurring opinion on the case.
“The right of access to courts applies equally to all cases, including divorce cases, in order to ensure that proceedings are conducted fairly to all concerned, to satisfy the people’s right to know what happens in their courts, and to serve as a check on corrupt practices by exposing the judicial process to public scrutiny,” she argued.
Divorce transparency might not apply to judges
Lagarde, Crain’s attorney, said the Copeland ruling doesn’t apply to Crain’s case after the Louisiana Legislature passed the wide-ranging privacy exception for judges in 2024.
Act 628, sponsored by state Rep. Delisha Boyd, D-New Orleans, allows federal, state and local judges to demand personal information about themselves and their families be removed from websites and social media platforms, including those private parties operate.
Boyd and Judge Tiffany Chase of the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, who helped craft the legislation, declined comment for this article.
Information judges can require to be taken off the internet includes their home address, date of birth, telephone number, Social Security number, place of worship, child’s school or daycare and the “employment location” of a spouse, child or dependent.
Judges can also ask for “marital records” to be removed, but what that term might encompass beyond a marriage license is unclear. There was no definition of a “martial record” included in the new law, though Lagarde has said it applied to Crain’s entire divorce file.
Cuillier, the public access expert from the University of Florida, said he isn’t convinced that marital records would necessarily cover divorce proceedings under the new law.
“A divorce isn’t a marriage. I think it is a stretch to call divorce records marital records,” he said after reviewing the law.
Louisiana’s new judicial privacy statute permits judges to sue individuals and businesses who don’t agree upon request to remove their protected information from the internet. Violators could also be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges that come with a penalty of up to 90 days in prison or a fine of up to $1,000.
Other states have passed similar laws in response to a national push from two judges who were attacked by people who appeared in their courtrooms.
Texas District Court Judge Julie Kocurek was shot and injured outside her home in Austin in 2015 by a man facing parole revocation in her court. U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas’ son was murdered and husband seriously injured in an attack on her doorstep in New Jersey in 2020 by a man who had appeared in her courtroom.
Stephen Gillers, an expert in judicial ethics from New York University, said extra layers of privacy for judges can be justified.
“It’s appealing to say that judges should be treated no differently from anyone else, and ordinarily that’s true, but they are different,” Gillers wrote in an email. “Their heightened visibility may warrant greater privacy depending on the facts.”
Yet other states’ laws blocking the disclosure of judges’ personal information aren’t as sweeping as Louisiana’s.
New Jersey, for example, shields public disclosure of addresses and phone numbers for judges, prosecutors and police. But it does not allow them to keep marital records confidential like the Louisiana law.
Cuillier said Louisiana’s law is particularly alarming because it includes a much longer list of records to keep private when compared to other states. Media organizations and members of the public could also face more severe penalties for spreading information about public officials than they would in other states.
“Marital record. Why keep that secret? …. Why is it bad to find out who I got married to and when I got married?” Cullier said. “This is a long list of things to have hidden.”
Louisiana’s law will also apply to many more elected officials starting in February, when the sweeping expansion takes effect.
At that point, local prosecutors, legislators, statewide elected officials and public service commissioners will have the same ability to demand their personal information – including marital records – be removed from social media and websites. They can also bring lawsuits and seek criminal penalties for those who publish that information.
Supreme Court justice divorces can be complicated
Part of what came to light when the Crain records were unsealed last month is the challenge of handling a Supreme Court justice’s divorce.
Four of the 12 judges on the 22nd Judicial District Court recused themselves from handling the Crain case – citing their “personal relationships” as a conflict of interest – before it was assigned to Burris, according to the Crain divorce records made public once the seal was lifted.
The Crain and Burris families have known each other for several years.
Burris replaced his father, William J. Burris, on the bench. The elder Burris, who presided from 1997 until 2017, served alongside Crain at the district court.
Crain’s father, Hilary J. Crain, was also a judge for St. Tammany and Washington parishes for decades, though he never overlapped with either Burris.
Judge “Billy” Burris declined to comment on his decision to grant the seal in the Crain divorce when asked by a reporter this month, though he noted the seal had already been lifted.