Louisiana Slavery Law: Code Noir, Angola, and Reform

Louisiana slavery law began with the French Code Noir of 1724, tightened under the 1806 territorial Black Code, and was folded into the state’s Civil Code before the Civil War. Its legacy is not confined to history: the state constitution still permits involuntary servitude as criminal punishment, the prison at Angola sits on a former plantation and runs an agricultural labor line, and modern statutes now criminalize the forced labor those older laws once authorized.

The Code Noir of 1724

France issued the Code Noir in March 1724 as the first comprehensive legal code governing slavery in Louisiana. Its 54 articles reached into nearly every part of enslaved people’s lives. All enslaved people were required to be baptized and instructed in Catholicism, other religions were banned, and gatherings for non-Catholic worship were punishable for both the enslaved and their owners.¹

The code also placed formal duties on slaveholders. Masters had to feed and clothe enslaved people at specified intervals and could not substitute alcohol for food rations. Enslaved people who were not properly fed or clothed could file complaints with colonial authorities, and masters could be prosecuted for “barbarous and inhuman treatment.” Disabled or elderly enslaved people abandoned by their owners were to be placed in the nearest hospital at the master’s expense.¹

These minimal protections sat alongside provisions of total control. The code’s stated purpose was preserving the colony’s economic viability while maintaining “the discipline of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman church.”¹

The 1806 Black Code

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the new American territorial government adopted its own slave code. The 1806 Black Code tightened restrictions on daily life and economic activity in ways the French code had not. Enslaved people could not own property, and any income they earned belonged to their owners. They could not be parties to civil lawsuits and could not testify against white people in criminal cases.²

The code restricted movement and assembly as well. Slaveholders could not allow enslaved people from other plantations to gather on their property. An enslaved person caught carrying provisions for sale without written permission from their owner faced seizure of the goods, and any white person could enforce these rules, not only owners.²

Weapons rules were especially detailed. Enslaved people could not carry firearms or other weapons at any time, even with an owner’s permission. Anyone who found an enslaved person with a weapon could seize it and claim ownership through a justice of the peace. Free people of color were required to carry a certificate from a justice of the peace proving their status, and faced the same penalties as enslaved people if they could not produce one.³

Slavery in the Antebellum Civil Code

Louisiana’s Civil Code, originally adopted in 1825 and revised through the 1850s, formalized the classification of enslaved people as property. Title VI, “Of Master and Servant,” contained a dedicated chapter on slaves with detailed rules for their sale, treatment, and punishment.⁴

This mattered because slavery was embedded in the same legal framework that governed contracts, property transfers, and commercial transactions. An enslaved person could be mortgaged, inherited, or seized by creditors like land or livestock. Disputes over the racial classification of mixed-race individuals became common, because whether a person was considered white or Black determined whether they could be held as property. The Civil Code remained in force until the end of the Civil War.

The Involuntary Servitude Exception in Louisiana’s Constitution

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude nationwide with one exception: “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”⁵ Louisiana’s constitution mirrors that language. Article I, Section 3 states: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, except in the latter case as punishment for crime.”⁶

In November 2022, voters considered Amendment 7, which would have removed the involuntary servitude exception. About 61 percent voted against it. The measure’s own legislative sponsor, State Representative Edmond Jordan, ultimately urged voters to reject it, citing ballot language that he said “could lead to multiple different conclusions or opinions.” Jordan said the intent was to bring back a clearer version. The exception remains in Louisiana’s constitution.

Prison Labor at Angola

The criminal punishment exception created an opening the state used immediately after emancipation. Convict leasing channeled formerly enslaved people and other Black Louisianans into forced labor through vagrancy statutes and other racially targeted criminal laws. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola sits on land that was an 8,000-acre plantation named for the homeland of the people once enslaved there. When the state began housing inmates on the property in 1880, prisoners lived in the old slave quarters and worked the plantation fields.

A class-action lawsuit, Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) v. LeBlanc, challenges Angola’s current agricultural labor. Inmates assigned to what the prison calls the “Farm Line” plant, water, weed, and harvest crops by hand under armed guards on horseback. The lawsuit alleges prison officials use unnecessarily primitive methods despite the availability of modern farming equipment and that workers receive little or no pay. The plaintiffs argue the conditions violate the Eighth Amendment, and their attorneys have described the Farm Line as designed to replicate aspects of chattel slavery.

Louisiana incarcerates approximately 1,067 people per 100,000 residents across prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile facilities, a rate higher than any independent democratic country in the world.

Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts and Ramos v. Louisiana

For more than 120 years, Louisiana allowed criminal convictions on 10-to-2 jury votes rather than requiring unanimity. The rule originated at the state’s 1898 constitutional convention, where delegates said their purpose was to “establish the supremacy of the white race.” Unable to bar Black jurors outright after the Fourteenth Amendment, the delegates crafted a facially neutral rule that let Black jurors’ votes be outnumbered.⁷

In 2018, voters approved Amendment 2, ending non-unanimous verdicts for future trials. Two years later, in Ramos v. Louisiana (2020), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial requires unanimity in state courts as well as federal ones. The Court noted that “no one before us contests” that race motivated the original rule.⁷

Racial bias in jury selection has also been challenged case by case. In State v. Jacobs, the Louisiana Supreme Court found that prosecutors used peremptory strikes to remove Black jurors with racially discriminatory intent, violating Batson v. Kentucky. A statistical report in the case documented a pattern by the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office of striking Black prospective jurors at disproportionate rates.⁸

Modern Human Trafficking and Involuntary Servitude Statutes

Louisiana criminalizes the forced labor and involuntary servitude its historical laws once sanctioned. Under RS 14:46.2, it is illegal to recruit, transport, harbor, or otherwise obtain a person through fraud, force, or coercion for labor or services. Knowingly benefiting from trafficking or helping facilitate it is also a crime.⁹

Penalties scale sharply based on the victim’s age and the type of exploitation:

Labor trafficking of an adult victim: up to 10 years at hard labor and a fine of up to $10,000.
Trafficking involving commercial sexual activity: up to 20 years at hard labor and a fine of up to $15,000.
Trafficking a person under 18 for labor: five to 25 years at hard labor, with the first five years served without parole, and a fine of up to $25,000.
Trafficking a person 18 to 20 for sexual purposes: 15 to 50 years at hard labor and a fine of up to $50,000.
Trafficking a child under 18 for sexual purposes: life imprisonment at hard labor without parole, probation, or sentence suspension, and a fine of up to $75,000.

The statute expressly bars a trafficker from using the victim’s age as a defense when the victim is under 21 and was exploited for commercial sexual activity. Consent is also not a defense in those cases.⁹

Civil Remedies for Trafficking Victims

Trafficking victims also have a private right to sue. Under RS 46:2163, a victim can file a civil action in district court seeking actual, compensatory, and punitive damages, plus injunctive relief. A prevailing victim also recovers court costs and attorney fees.¹⁰

When the trafficker’s conduct was willful and malicious, the court awards treble damages on any proven actual damages.¹⁰

Sentencing Reform and the Incarceration Legacy

Louisiana’s sentencing laws have long been among the harshest in the country. The habitual offender statute, RS 15:529.1, allows dramatically escalated sentences for repeat offenses. When someone’s third felony and both priors are violent crimes or sex offenses involving a minor, the sentence is life imprisonment without parole.¹¹

The 2017 reform package changed parts of that structure. Senate Bill 221 lowered the mandatory minimum for a second conviction from half the maximum penalty to one-third, and for a third conviction from two-thirds to one-half. For a fourth conviction where all offenses were nonviolent, the maximum dropped from life to twice the maximum for the underlying offense. The “cleansing period” for nonviolent offenses fell from 10 years to five, so older convictions drop off a habitual-offender calculation sooner. Act 281, passed the same year, scaled drug possession sentences to the weight of the substance and adjusted theft thresholds.¹²

The reforms were a step. Louisiana’s incarceration rate remains the highest or near-highest in the nation, and the constitutional exception permitting involuntary servitude as criminal punishment is still on the books.

1
Tulane European & Civil Law Forum. The Code Noir of 1724
2
Louisiana Anthology. Territory of Orleans – Black Code of 1806
3
Duke Center for Firearms Law. An Act Prescribing the Rules and Conduct to Be Observed with Respect to Negroes and Other Slaves of This Territory
4
Internet Archive. Civil Code of the State of Louisiana
5
Congress.gov. Thirteenth Amendment – Section 1
6
FindLaw. Louisiana Constitution of 1974 Art I 3
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Ramos v Louisiana
8
Supreme Court of Louisiana. State v Jacobs No 2009-K-1304
9
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Code RS 14-46.2 – Human Trafficking
10
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 46-2163 – Civil Cause of Action for Victims of Human Trafficking
11
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Code RS 15-529.1 – Sentences for Second and Subsequent Offenses
12
Louisiana State Legislature. Act No 281