Art. 4913.Limitations Upon Jurisdiction; Nature of Proceedings; Justice of the Peace Courts

A dollar cap is not the only fence around a justice of the peace court's authority. Article 4913 lists ten categories of cases these courts may never hear, no matter how small the amount at stake. Title to immovable property is off-limits, along with any case asserting civil or political rights under the federal or state constitution, and any case involving the right to hold a public office or position.

Family and status matters are excluded wholesale: annulment, legal separation, divorce, separation of property, custody, visitation, and support claims all belong elsewhere, as do successions, interdictions, receiverships, liquidations, habeas corpus, and quo warranto proceedings. A justice of the peace court also cannot hear a case naming the state, a parish, a municipality, or another political corporation as defendant, an executory proceeding, an adoption, tutorship, emancipation, or partition proceeding, or an in rem or quasi in rem proceeding, and the list leaves room for any other exclusion a separate statute might impose.

The article closes with a limit on remedies rather than subject matter: a justice of the peace court cannot issue an injunctive order at all, with one narrow exception. It may act to arrest execution of its own writ or to enforce a judgment it rendered, or one made executory in that court, but it has no general power to enjoin conduct the way a district court can.