Louisiana states its position in one line on the Department of Health's page on ordering birth records: Louisiana is a closed record state, which means birth and death certificates are not public records, and all requests must include proper identification, appropriate fees and a completed application. The Vital Records Registry sits within the Office of Public Health and keeps its central office in New Orleans rather than the state capital.
The list of people entitled to order is wider than in some closed record states but still finite: the person named on the document, their current spouse, and their mother, father, adult child, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather or grandchild. An attorney may order on behalf of any of those people, including someone under eighteen, with a written declaration of representation on letterhead carrying a bar roll number, a copy of current identification, and the authorisation of anyone presenting the request on the attorney's behalf. Local offices that issue vital records appear on the Louisiana parish pages.
- Fifteen or nine dollars: the long form birth certificate and the short form birth certification card, each including a four dollar Children's Trust Fund charge.
- A judgment of custody: any other adult seeking a child's record needs one; notarized custody papers and provisional mandates are not accepted.
- The fee is kept if nothing is found: Louisiana law retains the fee to cover the research, with a search covering the cited year and two years either side.
- Eight to ten weeks by post: the registry's own estimate, against walk in service in New Orleans or a clerk of court counter.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Louisiana's own systems: the Louisiana Department of Health page on ordering birth records, the Vital Records Registry service fees, the department's service fees page, the department's birth records questions and answers, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The fee schedule, set by statute
Louisiana's vital records fees are fixed by statute, mostly in one section of the revised statutes, and the registry notes that they are subject to change in any legislative session and are not subject to waiver. A short form birth certification card costs nine dollars a copy and a long form birth certificate fifteen dollars a copy, each including a four dollar charge for the Children's Trust Fund. A death certificate costs seven dollars, an Orleans marriage certificate five dollars and an evidentiary document ten dollars.
Administrative actions carry their own prices, each including one certified copy of the new record: filing a delayed certificate twenty seven dollars, an adoption, legitimation or paternity action twenty seven dollars, a correction of a birth record twenty seven dollars and of a death record twenty three dollars. A putative father registry certificate costs ten dollars, and an Orleans Parish marriage licence twenty seven dollars fifty, which includes a twelve dollar fifty charge for the Family Violence Fund. A fifty cent state charge is added to every postal or vendor order.
What happens when the record is not there
Two statutory rules shape the risk a Louisiana applicant takes. Where a document order is placed but no record is on file, the law provides that the fee is retained to cover the expense of the research, and the registry explains what that research covers: a full record search looks at the year the applicant cites and two years on either side of it. So an applicant unsure of a birth year gets a five year window for one fee, but gets nothing back if the record falls outside it.
Separately, a non refundable fee of eighteen dollars applies to any correction of a vital event record, except where the correction is initiated by the requester within ninety days of the record being accepted for registration, and that fee is due when the alteration request is submitted.
Four ways to order
Walk in service runs at the Vital Records Central Office on Poydras Street in New Orleans, from eight in the morning until half past three, excluding state holidays, and callers should bring photo identification and the correct fees, with exact cash, a cheque or a money order accepted. A will call option lets a customer order through the state's vendor and choose collection, receiving an email when the order has been processed and is ready to be picked up.
Participating clerks of court around the state offer certified copies of birth records in both long and short form, for an additional fee, which is the practical answer for anyone outside New Orleans. And postal orders go to the registry's post office box in New Orleans with a copy of photo identification and the correct fees, with the registry asking applicants to allow approximately eight to ten weeks for delivery.
Ordering online, by telephone or by fax
The Office of Public Health does not itself accept credit cards or online orders. Internet, fax and telephone orders are placed through the independent company the department has partnered with, which charges an additional fee for the service and more for expedited handling, and takes the major credit cards. The same company handles order status enquiries. For a requester outside Louisiana with no one to send to a counter, that route plus the fifty cent state charge is usually the fastest, although the vendor fee makes it the most expensive way to buy a nine dollar card.
Custody, authorisations and children's records
Louisiana is strict about who may obtain a child's certificate. Where an adult other than the entitled relatives listed above requests a child's record, they must present a judgment of custody, and the registry states that notarized custody papers or provisional custody mandates are not acceptable. For anyone else, the state disclosure of records statute requires authorisation: to release a birth or death record to a person who is not entitled, the registrant must submit an authorisation release of records together with a copy of the identification of the person authorised to receive the certified copy.
That mechanism is how an adult can send a friend, a carer or an employer's representative to collect a certificate on their behalf.
Pre adoption records, keepsakes and apostilles
The registry maintains three further routes alongside the ordinary certificate. Adoptee pre adoption certificates have their own process, for adoptees seeking the record as it stood before the adoption. A commemorative birth certificate is available as a keepsake rather than a legal document. And an apostille certificate is the version required where a Louisiana birth certificate has to be recognised by a foreign government, which matters for dual citizenship, foreign marriage and overseas residence applications.
Each has its own page and its own requirements, and none of them replaces the certified long or short form copy for domestic identity purposes.
Questions about Louisiana birth certificates
Related Louisiana records
Louisiana's other records guides on this site are the Louisiana public records law guide for the Public Records Law, the Louisiana death records guide for the same registry, the Louisiana court records guide for the clerks of court, and the Louisiana parish pages for every parish office.