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Vernon Joseph Aucoin, 72, a native of Morgan City and resident of Patterson, died Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025.
He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline Vaughn; sons, Kurtis Aucoin, Travis Aucoin and Mac Landry; daughters, Krissa Chauvin, Carla Aucoin and Abby Broussard; seven grandchildren; numerous great-grandchildren; stepmother, Evelyn Aucoin; brothers, Ronald Aucoin Sr., Rickey Aucoin Sr. and Kevin Aucoin; and sisters, Mollie Falcon, Lois Aucoin, Sheila David, Jackie David and Liesa Peltier.
He was preceded in death by his parents.
Services were Saturday at Hargrave Funeral Home with burial in St. Joseph the Work Cemetery in Pierre Part.
Hargrave Funeral Home of Morgan City was in charge of arrangements.

The Review/Bill Decker
At its Oct. 7 meeting, the Patterson City Council recognized the organizers of the Sept. 27 PHS Alumni Picnic, which drew 1,300 people. Receiving certificates were Sanika Dewey, Ranisa Washington Broussard, Kina Williams, Jo'Lynn Pierre and Tamsyn Siemen. Council members, standing in back from left: R. Demale Bowden, Ray Dewey Sr., Mamie Perry, Mayor Rodney Grogan, Miranda Weinbach, Lee Condolle and Police Chief Garrett Grogan.

Louisiana will argue on Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court that part of the Voting Rights Act is “is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.”
Though the arguments are the crescendo of a years-long legal battle within the state, they could also settle an even longer battle on how to interpret the Voting Rights Act in accordance with the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Louisiana took a sharp left turn the other week after the Supreme Court remitted the case back to the states to decide on a new question: whether “the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
The question hinges on a congressional district map drawn in 2022, which decides which people will vote in which races for the U.S House of Representatives. That map was drawn with two districts where Blacks in the districts outnumbered any other race.
These majority Black districts were created intentionally. These two districts were originally being defended by the state. Now, they are not.
When the federal courts "forced us to draw a new majority-minority district, we did so under protest and defended it because the Supreme Court’s backwards precedents permit that district,” state Attorney General Liz Murrill wrote in a statement.
Murrill thanked the Supreme Court for sending her on a road less traveled to decide “whether this entire system is constitutional.”
“My answer: it is not,” Murill continued. “Our Constitution sees neither Black voters nor white voters; it sees only American voters."
Originally, Louisiana was going to argue what it had been doing since the case began: that the congressional map drawn by the state was legal and should be upheld.
But with the case kicked back by the highest court, the state is arguing something radically different that has transformed the case from a familiar dispute seen before to one of major historical significance.
Now, the state will challenge Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that its race-conscious provisions “cannot be justified by current needs.”
Louisiana contends that Section 2’s framework for ensuring minority voting power has evolved into “discrimination’s main source and aggravator,” rather than a remedy for it.
The state argues that Congress has failed to show any present-day justification for maintaining what it calls an “extraordinary remedy” that forces states into “presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.”
Louisiana’s filing urges the justices to apply strict scrutiny – the highest level of judicial review – to Section 2 and to strike it down as incongruent with the 14th and 15th Amendments. The brief claims that Section 2 “imposes race-based remedies without the requisite showing of need” and that the Voting Rights Act has come to “balkanize us into competing racial factions.”
The plaintiffs who originally sued Louisiana – the Robinson appellants – told the curt in their filing that such a move would “upend nearly 150 years of precedent.” Their brief, led by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and ACLU, defends Section 2 as “a permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting,” enacted under Congress’ broad enforcement powers following the Reconstruction Amendments.
“Racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history,” the brief says, citing the continued effects of racial bloc voting and modern efforts to dilute Black political power in Louisiana and elsewhere. “Section 2 did not create this problem; to the contrary, Congress enacted it to hasten the waning of racism in American politics.”
The Robinson appellants warn that overturning Section 2 would “strip it of its foundational context” and erase decades of precedent in which courts found that discrimination in redistricting persists.
“The history of constitutional violations supporting Section 2’s enactment is massive and well-documented,” they wrote, pointing to a century of discriminatory tactics in Louisiana – from poll taxes to gerrymanders that “sliced” Black communities to weaken their voting strength. “Even now, it appears that Louisiana is planning to roll back Black representation in its congressional delegation.”
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the state, a new map will have to be drawn – one that is not bound by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Two new, high-volume pipelines now entering service in north Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale Region will supply natural gas to rapidly growing liquefied natural gas export facilities on the Gulf Coast, further expanding the markets accessible to producers in the northern part of the state.
As global LNG demand continues to drive economic growth on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, midstream companies like Momentum Midstream and Williams Companies are racing to build pipelines that will transport natural gas from the Haynesville production region in the northern part of the state to expanding markets in the south.
Both Momentum’s NG3 Pipeline and William’s Louisiana Energy Gateway Pipeline went into service in recent weeks, and each is expected to ramp up to full operating capacity of 1.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (Bcf/d) by the end of the year.
DT Midstream is currently expanding its LEAP Pipeline, which should add another 300 million cubic feet per day of takeaway capacity Haynesville Region gas producers by the middle of 2026. The DT Midstream expansion along with the new pipelines is expected to provide a combined 3.9 Bcf/d of additional takeaway capacity to Haynesville Basin gas producers during the next 10 months.
Greg Upton, executive director and associate professor of Research at Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies, said the new pipelines are another milestone in the development of the Haynesville Basin. “You go back to before 2015 – we were essentially exporting 0% of U.S. gas – and since then we’ve seen a truly remarkable increase in LNG exports,” Upton said.
“Now the U.S. exports about 12% of the gas it produces, and the growth in LNG exports over the last 10 years has been an important driver in the in growth in the Haynesville Shale. The new pipelines are needed to connect the gas produced in the Haynesville Shale to the export facilities,” said Upton.
Hayneville gas production reached about 14.7 Bcf/d in 2023 but then dropped to 11.0 Bcf/d in early 2025 before hitting an all-time high 15 Bcf/d in July. In its most recent forecast, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates Haynesville region natural gas production will average 15.6 Bcf/d in 2026.
The gas shipped on the new pipelines from the Haynesville region to the Gulf Coast will also supply LNG terminals located in the Port Arthur, Texas, area, just a few miles west of the Louisiana border. The Golden Pass LNG terminal now under construction in Port Arthur is expected to begin commercial service near the start of 2026, and by the end of the year it will need gas supplies totaling about 2.55 Bcf/d from both the Permian and Haynesville basins.
The Corpus Christi LNG Stage 3 expansion is expected to boost production by 0.9 Bcf/d using gas supplied primarily produced in the Permian Shale Region. Also in Texas, Midstream company Energy Transfer is currently building the first phase of the Hugh Brinson Pipeline, which should be capable of moving 1.5 Bcf/d of natural gas from the Permian Region to the Port Arthur area by the end of 2026