Jonathan C. Augustine
Deputy Executive Director, Louisiana Workforce Commission
Jonathan C. "Jay" Augustine was appointed deputy executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission in September 2010. Thus, he is the second ranking official of Louisiana's former Department of Labor. In this capacity, his responsibilities include legislative affairs, intergovernmental relations, and business engagement, and he directly supervises the office of the General Counsel, the Public Relations Division, and the office of Equal Opportunity. Immediately prior to his appointment, Augustine was a partner in Satchel Augustine LLC, a Baton Rouge-based law and consulting firm, and vice president of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, the governing body of Louisiana's largest public school district. Augustine successfully represented the Louisiana Department of Education as lead counsel in the nation's first-of-its-kind state takeover of a failed public school under federal court jurisdiction because of on-going desegregation litigation. In separate litigation, he also served as lead counsel in successfully defending a local school board against Equal Protection Clause challenges to the constitutionality of local bonding districts in one of America's longest running school desegregation cases In addition to public service as an appointed and elected officer, Augustine has served as an adjunct professor at Southern University Law Center and as a member of the trial advocacy adjunct faculty at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center. An accomplished author, his scholarship has been published in journals including the Louisiana Law Review, Tulane Maritime Law Journal, Louisiana Bar Journal, and Southern University Law Review, and his work has been cited in other published legal scholarship, by state administrative agencies, and by the Louisiana Supreme Court. His most recent scholarship is "Grading the Graders and Reforming the Reform: An Analysis of the State of Public Education Ten Years After No Child Left Behind," 57 Loyola Law Review ___ (2011) (forthcoming). Prior to co-founding Satchel Augustine, Augustine was a partner in the New Orleans law firm Montgomery, Barnett, Brown, Read Hammond & Mintz, LLP and a member of the faculty of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy ("NITA"). He earned a B.A. in economics from Howard University and served four years on active duty as a decorated U.S. Army infantry officer before earning his J.D. from Tulane University Law School. Augustine began his professional career as a judicial law clerk to Associate Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson of the Louisiana Supreme Court. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Augustine is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at United Theological Seminary and is a candidate for ordination in the Louisiana Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal ("AME") Church. A life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Jay Augustine and his wife, Roslyn, live in Baton Rouge with their children, Jillian, 6, and Satchel, born February 28, 2011.
