Can Elected Officials Violate Law with Impunity?

We have the U.S. Constitution, the Louisiana Constitution, the Louisiana Revised Statutes, and our own East Baton Rouge Parish Plan of Government.  All of those laws grant to federal, state, and local governments a vast array of powers, but those documents also contain numerous safeguards that are designed to protect our rights.
But what if the safeguards written into law were just words that had no meaning, no operative effect?  What if they were high sounding and glorious but actually counted for absolutely nothing?
A government of laws takes the law seriously and lives by the law.
A government of men considers the law nothing more than a joke, used when useful to bolster the power of those in office and twisted or ignored when the law is inconvenient.
The Rule of Law is about holding the government — which means the people in power — to abide by the laws that they and their predecessors have enacted.
But the Rule of Law is in danger in East Baton Rouge Parish, as we hurdle toward becoming another New Orleans or Detroit.
In May, the Metro Council passed an ordinance purporting to annex portions of the Mall of Louisiana.  This was illegal in many ways.  For one thing, the Plan of Government requires that all annexations be “compact” — not filled with holes as this annexation is, leaving out major stores in the Mall such as Penney’s, Sears, Macy’s, and Dillards.  The petition failed to include the signature of all property owners or to include the valuations of all of the property.  The Metro Council failed to properly advertise the ordinance and failed to allow it to lay over until the next meeting as required by the Plan of Government.
On June 12, I filed suit to stop this illegal annexation.  The Plan of Government specifically provides in Section 1.09 that “any citizen of the city” can file suit to block an illegal annexation.  Yet, the City of Baton Rouge, unwilling to simply defend its annexation in court, filed an exception of no right of action, alleging that I did not have an actual “interest” in filing suit.  On Monday, Aug. 4, District Judge Janice Clark agreed and threw our case out of court.  Now my attorney Alex St. Amant is preparing to file an appeal.
But here’s what is very troubling: The position of the City of Baton Rouge and Judge Clark is really that no citizen of Baton Rouge has standing to file suit to challenge the annexation!  Think of that!  Of what value are the Constitution and laws, if no one can file suit to require that the government obey the laws which it has made?