fair chances for all
Creating Opportunity + Strengthening Families + Growing Economy = Thriving Community
Louisiana’s
Fair Chance
Campaign
The Fair Chance campaign for Louisiana seeks to reduce barriers to employment, professional licensing, housing, education, and economic opportunity faced by people with conviction histories in Lafayette Parish. Through coalition building, public education, leadership development, storytelling, community outreach, and policy engagement, VOTE will build a sustainable grassroots infrastructure led by directly impacted people.
Past Conviction ≠ Permanent Punishment
local campaigns
VOTE’s Fair Chance Campaign is a statewide and local effort across our chapter locations.
The New Orleans Fair Chance Campaign began in 2025. The Fair Chance Amendment passed with 75% of the vote and makes the City, and any private companies it contracts with, no longer be able to deny qualified applicants jobs, permits, or opportunities solely because of a past conviction.
Lafayette's campaign is funded by the Louisiana Justice Fund (LJF), a fund that supports projects aimed at reducing incarceration rates, improving reentry outcomes, and dismantling barriers to economic mobility, particularly for individuals disparately represented in the criminal legal system.
Campaign coming soon!
Louisiana locks up more people than anywhere else, and many people remain shut out of jobs long after serving their time.
More than one-third of U.S. adults have a criminal record. People with conviction histories face nearly five times the unemployment rate of the general public and earn 48% less, costing working families $78 to 87 billion annually.
Louisiana’s economy was built on slavery, then “convict leasing” and prison labor. Today, incarcerated people work for pennies, and those returning home face lifelong barriers.
This is about more than fairness
It’s about public safety, economic strength, and a state that works for everyone. When people have fair chances, they’re less likely to return to the justice system, and more able to fill needed jobs and strengthen our communities.
Campaign Pillars
Narrative Change
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Coalition Building
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Base Building
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Leadership Development
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Resources
We offer a range of services to meet the needs of every client. Have something else in mind? We'd be happy to work with you to create a custom quote.
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Building on VOTE and Step Up’s “Ban the Box” law, now strengthened with real enforcement, this amendment creates a lasting foundation for fair hiring and equal opportunity.
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Flexible, expert advice when you need it. Book hourly support across a range of topics—from planning to problem-solving. This focused consultation will help clarify your goals, map out next steps, and identify opportunities for growth.
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Flexible, expert advice when you need it. Book hourly support across a range of topics—from planning to problem-solving. This focused consultation will help clarify your goals, map out next steps, and identify opportunities for growth.
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Flexible, expert advice when you need it. Book hourly support across a range of topics—from planning to problem-solving. This focused consultation will help clarify your goals, map out next steps, and identify opportunities for growth.
our Partners
The Protected Class Network
The Protected Class Network brings together and supports groups led by justice-impacted people that are organizing in their communities to designate those with conviction and arrest records as a protected class, joining race, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and other legally protected categories. From the beginning, we’ve viewed local legislation as the first step towards having similar legislation passed in other cities, at the state level, and ultimately by the federal government.
The Protected Class Network is a civil rights movement developed by formerly incarcerated Black women who know from our own experience how people like us are legally denied our basic civil rights because of our conviction or arrest history.
The Protected Class Network builds on the 2022 passage of an ordinance that made justice-impacted people a protected class in Atlanta. The Prison Policy Initiative, the anti-mass incarceration movement’s foremost research and policy organization, included “barring discrimination against people based on conviction history” as a “winnable criminal justice reform.” Founded in 2023, the Protected Class Network currently includes 10 justice-impacted-led organizations working in 15 states and the District of Columbia to pass similar legislation in their communities.