FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE–June 26, 2026
How Did Louisiana Progress’s “Affordability Agenda” fare in the 2026 Legislative Session?
After working with legislators to file and fight for more than 15 bills during the 2026 Louisiana legislative session, all of which were designed to help address the state’s cost-of-living crisis, Louisiana Progress looks back on a largely successful session.
BATON ROUGE, LA | June 26, 2026–After three months of policy advocacy in the Louisiana legislature, our team at Louisiana Progress is proud to look back on an overall successful body of work that helped address the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting all Louisianans, and especially the poor and working-class Louisianans who we seek to advocate for.
“Of the nearly 20 bills we worked with Democratic and Republican legislators to introduce and fight for, seven of them made it to Governor Landry’s desk,” according to Louisiana Progress Executive Director Peter Robins-Brown. “That relatively high rate of success speaks to the fact that legislators across the political spectrum understand that their constituents are having an incredibly difficult time making ends meet, and those individual and family struggles are making it harder for Louisiana to thrive as a whole.”
“We started with an ambitious agenda because we wanted to rise to meet the moment,” said Elai Levinson, Policy & Operations Manager at Louisiana Progress. “Our agenda addressed cost-of-living across several key issue areas, including consumer protections, government fines and fees, healthcare, and workers’ rights. While we weren’t successful in all of our advocacy efforts, even the bills that didn’t pass helped move the needle in Louisiana to be more centered on the everyday problems facing poor and working-class people in our state.”
HB 750 by Rep. Vincent Cox & Sen. Royce Duplessis, aka “Click-to-cancel,” makes it just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one by requiring sellers to be transparent and fair with consumers about how renewals and cancellations function, and to allow consumers to cancel the contract using the same method they used to sign up for it.
HB 153 by Rep. Mandie Landry bars public agencies and their third-party debt collectors from reporting criminal justice system debt to credit agencies. While criminal justice fines and fees are an important part of the penalization process, referring debts that people can’t afford to pay to credit reporting agencies only puts people deeper into a financial hole. That is especially harmful for people who are trying to reenter society from incarceration who may already be having a hard time finding jobs and housing.
HB 1173 by Rep. Edwin Murray provides grace for up to three late payments for people who are already in the Office of Motor Vehicle’s Reinstatement Relief Program before an automatic $25 late fee gets added to their existing debt. Adding more fines and fees to people who are working in good faith to pay off existing debt to the government doesn’t help the government collect more money and further harms the people who are trying to get out from under that debt. We worked closely with our friends at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice to develop and advocate for this bill.
HB 762 by Rep. Mike Bayham clarifies that the Office of Motor Vehicles doesn’t have to refer automobile insurance lapse debts to the Office of Debt Recovery, which charges a 15% “service” fee, ensuring that the OMV has the flexibility to put people on affordable repayment plans.
HB 845–Rep. Mike Bayham increases DWI reinstatement fees to put Louisiana’s fees more in line with other states, rebalance OMV fines and fees so that people are penalized more for bad driving behavior than for personal financial insecurity, and increase revenue to help offset some of the reductions to OMV revenues that were created by HBs 762 and 1173.
Along with leading the advocacy work on the bills listed above, we worked closely with allies to provide support for two more bills that passed:
SB 401 by Sen. Kirk Talbot creates a drug pricing advisory board that aims to create more transparency in the way prescription drugs are priced and distributed. We hope the bill will work in conjunction with SB 387 by Sen. Bass, which focuses on transparency for pharmacy costs, to ultimately lower prescription drug and overall healthcare prices.
SB 414, also by Sen. Kirk Talbot, is a bill to reign in medical debt collection practices by capping interest on medical debt arising from medically necessary care at three percent per year. Our friends at the American Cancer Society and the Louisiana Public Health Institute led the way on making this law a reality.
“None of this success would have been possible without the amazing work of our dedicated College Fellows, all undergrads who study at Southern, LSU, and Tulane,” added Robins-Brown. “Along with our Graduate Student Interns who served with us while completing their master’s degrees in public health at LSU and Tulane, in-state partners like the Louisiana AFL-CIO, and fantastic national partners, including the American Economic Liberties Project, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the UC-Berkeley Law Center, and many more.”