Will Nyx Mardi Gras parade be cut from 2025 schedule? New Orleans City Council will vote.

The fate of the controversial Mystic Krewe of Nyx will hang in the balance Thursday, when the New Orleans City Council plans to vote to deny or extend its parade permit.

City Councilman JP Morrell has made it no secret that he hopes to remove the Nyx parade from the ranks of New Orleans' 34 official Carnival float parades.

On Thursday, he will propose an amendment to the city's Mardi Gras ordinance that would strike Nyx from the future lineup, according to the City Council meeting agenda.

If the council votes to approve the amendment, and Mayor LaToya Cantrell signs it, Nyx would not be able to ride during its traditional spot on the Wednesday before Mardi Gras.

In a meeting of the Carnival Legislative Advisory Committee on April 24, Morrell accused Nyx of violating the city’s parading rules by rolling without the required number of marching bands, and by advertising for membership via social media and on specially designed throws that riders were told to toss during the parade.

“The ordinance is clear that in situations like this, it is in the council's purview and authority to remove said krewes,” Morrell said during the meeting, “and that is absolutely my intent.”

Nyx attorney and spokesperson Doug Sunseri said Wednesday that he was unaware of the impending vote.

“The lack of notice and the lack of due process is par for the course,” he said, adding that Nyx is being treated like a “political punching bag.”

A relatively young krewe, Nyx first paraded in 2012 with just over 500 riders. In the next few years its all-female membership soared, topping 3,000 by 2018. But the Nyx sisterhood, as it was known, has since dwindled to a few hundred members.

A mass resignation began in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020, when krewe captain Julie Lea posted the slogan “All Lives Matter” on a Nyx social media account. To many members of the krewe, the message seemed dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement that was sweeping the country.

Lawsuits about float contracts, transphobia allegations, and membership fee scandals also surfaced as the krewe deflated. 

In 2024, the once popular parade that traditionally rolls the Wednesday before Mardi Gras was, by many accounts, lightly attended.

During the Carnival Legislative Advisory Committee meeting, Morrell suggested that if Nyx were eliminated from the schedule, the Wednesday before Mardi Gras might be eliminated from the parade calendar, thereby taking some pressure off overstretched city services during the busy season.

So far, however, the Druids parade that rolls on the same night as Nyx remains on the schedule.