Teacher-Student Sex

Consensual sex between students over the age of 16 and their teachers would become illegal in Louisiana under a law passed by the state legislative committee. It is not illegal under current law.

The House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee approved a substitute bill for Geymann’s House Bill 586 without objection, sending it next to the full House.

[Rep. Brett Geymann] and Rep. Hollis Downs, R-Ruston, combined their two similar bills and weakened the proposed first-offense penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor, with up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

A second offense would be one to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

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The bill defines an educator as a teacher, coach, administrator, paraprofessional, teacher aide or student aide at a public or private high school.

Downs said he would have liked to have included bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodial workers, but there were concerns the bill would receive less support.

“So if I’m a teacher, and I fall in love with a high school student,” Rep. Ernest Wooten, R-Belle Chasse said sarcastically, “then I have to quit and start driving a bus.”

So in addition to being willing, finally, to join the rest of the nation in banning cockfighting, Louisiana is also ready to outlaw sex between school teachers and their teenaged students. Better late than never, I guess.