BATON ROUGE — A program that generates millions of dollars every year for the City-Parish may be illegal, according to a civil suit currently pending in the First Circuit.

"When this program was started, the ordinance that established put the program under the control of DPW. Well, this violates the home rule charter for EBR because the home rule charter says traffic is a police function," New Orleans attorney Joe McMahon said.

McMahon is representing the plaintiffs suing the City of Baton Rouge for its red light enforcement program. He’s won similar suits in both Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

In the Orleans Parish case, a judge ordered the parish would have to pay back nearly $26 million in tickets. McMahon says, with interest, that's gone up to more than $55 million.

As expected, the City-Parish has appealed Judge Kelly Balfour's decision that the suit may proceed. In McMahon's experience, the appeals court has affirmed the district court's decisions. 

"There are probably at least 250,000 tickets that have been issued. The last numbers we have received were from 2021 and showed collections just shy of $40 million in EBR."

In total, the program has generated $53,404,043 since it began in 2007. That money goes into the City-Parish general fund, according to a spokesperson.

Each year, paid tickets bring in anywhere from $2.7 to $4.4 million — except for the first year in 2008 when there were far fewer cameras installed.

In 2024, the City-Parish only brought $1.7 million.

A spokesperson says that's because currently only 15 out of the 33 cameras in the parish are working. They have not been replaced because officials are in the process of finding new locations for new cameras.

That revenue, though, pales in comparison to the total dollar amount for tickets that have not been paid — a whopping $112,907,250.

The parish's top-10 violators owe nearly $200,000.

McMahon says those tickets should stay unpaid.

"We don't believe that anybody should have paid these tickets because it violates state law and it's unconstitutional in its enforcement."

Every year the anticipated revenue generated from people paying these tickets is factored into the City-Parish budget, so unpaid tickets do affect calculations to an extent.

A potentially much larger impact to the budget could happen if the courts decide the red light ticket program is illegal. Baton Rouge could be on hook to pay back every ticket ever issued, which would be more than $50 million.

As far as what will happen if you do not pay your ticket, McMahon says those rumors about negative impacts to insurance or credit reports are false. The worst repercussion he has heard is a car getting booted.

"That seems to be the only method of enforcement that cities and municipalities are using.”

We asked the City-Parish whether they've ever taken anyone to court for unpaid tickets, but they were unable to provide a response by the time this story was published.