Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border (Getty Images).

Chariton County cannot block construction of the Grain Belt Express electric transmission line by refusing permission to cross county roads, the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The county can establish rules for how the transmission line crosses its roads, the court ruled as it modified a trial court decision that said the county could make no regulations at all.

“The decision as to whether Grain Belt’s overhead transmission lines for the project would be constructed across Chariton County’s public roads was already made by the (Missouri Public Service Commission) when it issued its Report and Order on Remand granting the (certificate of convenience and necessity) and approving the final proposed route of the project,” Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote in the unanimous decision of the three-judge panel.

Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border. Half the power it carries will be delivered to Missouri utilities.

At first welcomed by many of the counties it will cross in north Missouri, the line has become controversial with complaints about aesthetics, whether high-voltage lines cause health issues and the power of the Public Service Commission to grant eminent domain power to obtain land for construction.

Republican legislators and agricultural groups tried repeatedly to strip Grain Belt’s right of eminent domain, which would have killed the project. But in 2022, lawmakers passed compromise legislation requiring, in the event of future large transmission lines, greater compensation for landowners and setting a seven-year time limit for companies to build transmission lines after obtaining their easements. 

Grain Belt’s disagreements with Chariton County began in 2014, Hardwick wrote in the decision, two years after it had initially received consent from the Chariton County Commission to cross its county-owned roads. Chariton County withdrew its consent and made it contingent upon the PSC approving the project.

When it received initial approval from the PSC, Grain Belt’s owners tried to negotiate with Chariton County. When it refused again to give its consent, the lawsuit followed.

Associate Circuit Judge Daren Adkins, assigned to the case from Daviess County, ruled that a state law barring counties from adopting ordinances “governing” utilities within their boundaries meant that an older law, requiring utilities to obtain consent from utilities to go “through, on, under or across” its roads could not be enforced.

The decision Tuesday modified that ruling. The law prohibiting an ordinance governing a utility is designed to protect against local rules that are in conflict with state rules, the court said.

But it doesn’t mean the law requiring consent to cross a road doesn’t have any effect, Hardwick wrote. The county can set standards but it cannot withhold its consent, she wrote.

“A fair interpretation is that (law) requires a county commission’s agreement regarding how a utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads,” she wrote “not whether such utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads in the first place.”

Overall utility policy is set at the state level, not the county level, she wrote.

“Doing so usurps the authority granted the MPSC in Chapter 386,” she wrote, “and exercises a power granted to the county in a manner contrary to the public policy of this state.”

The Rush Island Energy Center on the Mississippi River will close following a federal court ruling (photo courtesy of Ameren Missouri).

One of Ameren Missouri’s largest coal plants will shut down Tuesday after more than 13 years of litigation over its failure to comply with federal clean air regulations. 

The St. Louis-based electric utility will retire the Rush Island Energy Center, a two-unit 1,178-megawatt coal plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Jefferson County, which operated for years in violation of the Clean Air Act. 

Ameren, which serves 1.2 million customers in Missouri, announced in 2021 it would retire the plant 15 years early rather than install pollution controls ordered by a federal court.

Once the plant shuts down, the company will start disconnecting the plant from power, move equipment out to Ameren’s other coal plants and ready it for demolition, said Tim Lafser, Ameren’s vice president of power operations and engineering.

“We’re guessing three to six months of activity there before we would be to the point where we could turn it over to a demolition contractor to knock the plant down,” Lafser said.

But knocking down Rush Island doesn’t mark the end of the litigation over its clean air violations. Ameren is still negotiating with federal prosecutors and environmental advocates over how to make up for more than a decade of illegal sulfur dioxide pollution. 

Gretchen Waddell Barwick, director of the Missouri chapter of the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, said simply retiring Rush Island doesn’t resolve the injustices suffered by communities downwind of the coal plant.

“I don’t think that justice has been served here,” Waddell Barwick said, “but I am pleased for the people in the community that will see their suffering (lessen).” 

Lafser declined to comment on the litigation, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing case. 

Rush Island, built in the mid-1970s, narrowly avoided a 1977 update to the Clean Air Act requiring pollution controls at newly-constructed coal plants. Older plants were grandfathered into the rule unless they made upgrades beyond routine maintenance.

Ameren updated Rush Island’s two units in 2007 and 2010 but didn’t install pollution controls, violating the 1977 Clean Air Act update and sparking a lawsuit by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In 2019, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of MIssouri Rodney Sippel ordered Ameren to obtain a permit, install scrubbers and lower its sulfur dioxide emissions. Sippel also ordered Ameren to install scrubbers to temporarily lower sulfur dioxide emissions at its larger Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County to make up for the excess emissions at Rush Island.

The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in 2021 upheld Sippel’s order requiring Ameren to install scrubbers, but struck down the requirement at Labadie.

Later in 2021, Ameren announced it would retire Rush Island. It argued the retirement should mark the resolution of the lawsuit. But Sippel ordered Ameren and prosecutors to negotiate potential mitigation measures to make up for the sulfur dioxide emissions, which he said “harm public health and the environment, contribute to premature deaths, asthma attacks, acid rain and other adverse effects in downwind communities, including the St. Louis Metropolitan Area.”

Sippel’s order, issued in June, said over the 14 years since Rush Island’s second unit was updated without scrubbers installed, it has released 275,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Ameren argues the figure is closer to 256,000 tons. 

According to Sippel’s order, Ameren has repeatedly resisted further mitigation beyond retiring Rush Island. It argued there was “no equitable remedy” to the unpermitted pollution and that retiring Rush Island mitigates the harm from its emissions.

“Ameren’s position that an equitable remedy is not available for its unlawful pollution has already been rejected three times,” Sippel wrote. “And, over the course of several hearings, I have informed Ameren that its retirement of Rush Island does not mitigate the massive pollution it released into the atmosphere.”

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the date of the closure. 

Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, talks with Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on an episode of Brietbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot at Quicken Loans Arena on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio (Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM).

A settlement has been reached between the Gateway Pundit and two Georgia poll workers who accused the St. Louis-based far-right website of defamation in a civil suit in St. Louis Circuit Court.

Notice of the settlement was filed Monday afternoon. The parties to the dispute “provide notice to the court that the parties have reached agreement to settle all claims and counterclaims asserted in the … action, which settlement shall be satisfied on March 29, 2025,” the notice reads.

“The parties respectfully request that this court vacate the trial date set in this matter,” the notice continues, “and stay this matter until March 29, 2025, at which point the parties will dismiss this matter pending satisfaction of the terms of the Parties’ settlement agreement.”

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

As Fox News case heads to trial, far right St. Louis site faces its own defamation suit

A representative of the legal team working for the two poll workers wrote in an email that the settlement offers “mutual satisfaction” and is “fair and reasonable.” The poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, could not be reached.

Jonathan Burns, the St. Louis-based lawyer for Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit’s owner, did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

In June, 2022, the two women provided emotional testimony to the House Select Committee Investigating the January 6^th Attack on the Capitol about the harassment, including death threats, that had resulted from false allegations they had committed voter fraud on behalf of Joe Biden during the counting of votes on election night in 2020.

Among those spreading the lies was the Gateway Pundit, which repeatedly bragged that it was the first to identify the two women as the culprits in the alleged fraud. Georgia election officials immediately debunked the allegations, but the Gateway Pundit continued to make them for years in dozens of articles.

The preliminary settlement appears to mean the Gateway Pundit will face little or no public reckoning in court for its repeated falsehoods.

The case, first filed in St. Louis Circuit Court in December, 2021, had appeared to be emerging as a high-profile test of the limits of the First Amendment, not unlike the defamation cases filed by parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook against Alex Jones and Dominion Voting Systems’ suit against Fox News.

Both of those cases ended up in huge judgments against the defendants.

A jury in Washington, D.C., awarded the two women more than $148 million in a defamation suit they had filed against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for telling the same lies about them that they accused the Gateway Pundit of spreading.

Some legal observers saw the prospect for a similar judgment by a St. Louis jury against the defendants in the suit here – TGP Communications, which does business as Gateway Pundit; Jim Hoft, the company’s sole owner; and his identical twin brother Joe, who is a contributor to the site.

The trial in St. Louis had been scheduled to start next March 10.

False fraud claims a focus of Rudy Giuliani’s 2020 Missouri testimony, St. Louis defamation suit

But it appears that the two women have yet to collect a dime from Giuliani, so the prospect of a settlement in the St. Louis case may have appeared to be worth taking. And the apparent settlement in the St. Louis case has a precedent – in April 2022 the two women settled their similar claims with One America News Network. The terms of that agreement were not disclosed. OANN did, however, later broadcast a statement that an investigation by Georgia officials had shown that the women “did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct while working at State Farm Arena on election night.”

What may have driven the Hofts to settle, one attorney familiar with these kinds of cases said, was the failure last July of their filing for bankruptcy in Florida. Had they been allowed bankruptcy protection, the St. Louis defamation case would have been stayed indefinitely.

But instead the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach dismissed the case as a bad faith filing, “reflect(ing) the use of bankruptcy as a pure litigation tactic.”

During the bankruptcy proceedings, it was revealed that Gateway Pundit had a media insurance policy that carried $2 million in gross benefits, of which $700,000 had already been spent on legal fees in defending the St. Louis case. The attorney who is familiar with similar cases said it was possible the Hofts wanted to use the remaining insurance money to settle or help settle the case and put it behind them, rather than deplete it further by continuing to fight.

The settlement may mean escape for the Hofts from the potentially knockout punch that many observers thought a St. Louis jury might deal their website, one of the most influential on the far right. It also appears to mean that whatever information had been turned up by the two women’s lawyers in pre-trial discovery will never become public.

It was known, for example, that the lawyers were seeking the company’s financial records and searching for an understanding of how precisely the Gateway Pundit turned clicks on the site’s website into cash, and therefore the extent of their financial motive for repeating their lies.

It was also known that the lawyers were scheduled to depose the Hoft brothers — or perhaps even had by the time of the agreement to settle. Now whatever the Hofts may have said in those depositions, if they occurred, will remain under protective order.

This story was originally published by the Gateway Journalism Review. 

Dyllan Davault, a harvester at Robust Cannabis facility in Cuba, Mo., tends to greenhouse plants on May 2, 2023 (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

The court debate Tuesday over how Missouri marijuana products get taxed statewide sounded similar to a grammar class on conjunctions and comma placement.

The constitutional amendment voters approved in 2022 legalizing recreational marijuana allowed local governments to impose additional sales tax on the products.

The big question before the three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District on Tuesday was: what did voters intend by “local government?”

Attorneys for St. Louis and St. Charles counties argued the word “and” is key in the definition laid out in the constitutional amendment.

It states that “local government” means, “in the case of an incorporated area, a village, town, or city; and, in the case of an unincorporated area, a county.” 

The counties asked the appellate judges to uphold a lower court’s interpretation in May that both a county and a local municipality can impose a 3% sales tax at dispensaries in their jurisdictions.

However, Florissant-based dispensary Robust Missouri 3 LLC argued that the comma placement is key. 

“While ‘and’ typically functions as a conjunction, here it connects two distinct clauses—one for incorporated areas and one for unincorporated areas — under the framework of ‘in the case of,’ which delineates separate alternatives,” states Robust’s reply brief.

Attorneys for Robust said Tuesday that voters didn’t intend for two local governments – in its case, St. Louis County and the City of Florissant — to both add taxes, resulting in a 14.988% sales tax rate. That’s before a statewide 6% adult use marijuana tax is added in, making the total sales tax at the Florissant dispensary 20.988%.

To put that in perspective, the highest adult-use marijuana sales tax in Missouri is in Florissant’s neighboring cities of Hazelwood and St. Ann, with 17.988% or 23.988% total.

Looking beyond the grammar, appellate judges asked about the possibility of “absurd outcomes” that St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May wrote about in his ruling if the court accepted Robust’s definition of local government.

May wrote that if Robust’s interpretation of the amendment were accepted,  “then a municipality or city would essentially be given carte blanche to ignore any county ordinance or regulation, including those related to public health and safety wholly unrelated to the taxing issue.” 

May was largely talking about public health regulations because public health in Florissant is regulated by St. Louis County.

On Tuesday, Judge Robert Clayton asked Robust’s attorney Eric Walter: “If we accept your definition, all those county regulations or everything else will be no longer applicable on these particular types of businesses.”

Walter replied that the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the state agency tasked with regulating cannabis businesses, requires “that you’re compliant with all the local government regulations.”

Both attorneys for the counties and Robust declined to comment on Tuesday’s hearing. 

Following May’s ruling, the Missouri Association of Counties executive director Steve Hobbs said the association has strongly advocated that counties have the ability to do levvy their own taxes.

“The bulk of the counties around the state had gone to the voters and asked them to implement this tax,” Hobbs told The Independent in May. “And I think every one of them approved of it. I think [the ruling] removes some uncertainty from those counties.” 

On the other side, leaders of the marijuana industry have called the effort to collect both taxes an “unconstitutional money grab” that violates the terms of the amendment.

Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association said the appellate judges Tuesday seemed “very prepared and well versed on the issue.”

“Obviously much of the discussion centered around the definition of local government in Missouri’s Constitution, which we saw as a good sign,” Cardetti said. “As we enter year two of Missouri cannabis consumers paying roughly $3 million more each month than they should, we hope to bring customers relief as quickly as possible.”

A similar appeals case out of Buchanan County is also pending.

St. Joseph dispensary Vertical Enterprises sued Buchanan County Collector Peggy Campbell, arguing that it, too, would be “irreparably harmed” if both taxes were imposed.

Also in May, Circuit Judge Daniel Kellogg ruled that the marijuana law does not limit the taxing power of counties within corporate limits of towns and cities.

A hearing date for this case has not yet been set.

The story has been updated to include the statewide 6% adult use marijuana sales tax. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a federal firearm regulation aimed at reining in ghost guns, untraceable, unregulated weapons made from kits. In this photo, a ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House April 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices Tuesday grappled with whether the Biden administration exceeded its authority when it set regulations for kits that can be assembled into untraceable firearms, and a majority of justices seemed somewhat skeptical the rule was an overreach.

In Garland v. VanDerStok, the nine justices are tasked with determining whether a rule issued by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in 2022 overstepped in expanding the definition of “firearms” to include “ghost guns” under a federal firearms law.

Ghost guns are firearms without serial numbers and can be easily bought online and quickly assembled in parts, usually through a kit. Law enforcement officials use serial numbers to track guns that are used in crimes.

Arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that there has been an “explosion in crimes” with untraceable guns across the U.S.

She added that the federal government has for years required gun manufacturers and sellers to mark firearms with a serial number.

“The industry has followed those conditions without difficulty for more than half a century, and those basic requirements are crucial to solving gun crimes and keeping guns out of the hands of minors, felons and domestic abusers,” Prelogar said.

She said with the kits to make untraceable homemade guns in as little as 15 minutes, those manufacturers “have tried to circumvent those requirements.”

Prelogar said untraceable guns “are attractive to people who can’t lawfully purchase them or who plan to use them in crime.”

Because the ATF saw a spike in crimes committed with those firearms, Prelogar said it promulgated the 2022 rule. The Biden administration said since 2016, it’s seen a tenfold increase in ghost guns.

What the rule does

The regulation does not ban ghost guns, but requires manufacturers of those firearm kits or parts to add a serial number to the products, as well as conduct background checks on potential buyers. The regulation also clarified those kits are considered covered by the 1968 Gun Control Act under the definition of a “firearm.”

The Biden administration is advocating for the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s decision that favored gun rights groups and owners that argued the agency exceeded its authority.

Pete Patterson on Tuesday represented those gun rights groups, such as the Firearms Policy Coalition and clients, and argued the ATF expanded the definition of a firearm to “include items that may readily be converted to a frame or receiver.”

A frame or receiver is the primary structure of a firearm that holds the other components that cause the gun to fire.

“Congress decided to regulate only a single part of a firearm, the frame or receiver, and Congress did not alter the common understanding of a frame or receiver,” he said. “ATF has now exceeded its authority by operating outside of the bounds set by Congress.”

The case has already been before the high court on an emergency basis in 2023. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and two conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett, allowed the regulation to remain in place while going through legal challenges.

The case is similar to the Supreme Court decision that struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks from the ATF, but that was on the grounds of a Second Amendment argument.

Omelets and turkey chili kits

Justice Samuel Alito questioned Prelogar whether the kits were defined as weapons.

“Here’s a blank pad and here’s a pen,” he said. “Is this a grocery list?”

She said it wasn’t because “there are a lot of things you could use those products for to create something other than a grocery list.”

Alito asked her if he had eggs, chopped up ham, peppers and onions, “is that a Western omelet?”

“No, because, again, those items have well known other uses to become something other than an omelet,” Prelogar said. “The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat, and they have no other conceivable use.”

Barrett asked if her answer would change if “you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?”

Prelogar said it would.

“We are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon, in the absence of this kind of evidence that that is their intended purpose and function,” she said.

“But if you bought, you know, from Trader Joe’s, some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet, and maybe included whatever you would need to start the fire in order to cook the omelet, and had all of that objective indication that that’s what’s being marketed and sold, we would recognize that for what it is,” Prelogar continued.

Roberts asked Patterson what the purpose would be of selling a receiver without a hole in it, meaning the gun is not complete.

Patterson argued that the kits are mainly for gun hobbyists, who would have to drill their own holes to put the product together.

“Some individuals enjoy, like working on their car every weekend, some individuals want to construct their own firearms,” Patterson said.

Roberts seemed skeptical.

“I mean drilling a hole or two, I would think doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends,” Roberts said.

Patterson argued that putting together a homemade gun was somewhat difficult, especially if an individual had no experience.

“Even once you have a complete frame, it’s not a trivial matter to put that together,” he said. “There are small parts that have to be put in precise locations.”

No hobbyists

In her rebuttal, Prelogar pushed back on the notion that hobbyists were using those kits, arguing that “if there is a market for these kits, for hobbyists, they can be sold to hobbyists, you just have to comply with the requirements of the Gun Control Act.”

“What the evidence shows is that these guns were being purchased and used in crime. There was a 1,000% increase between 2017 and 2021 in the number of these guns that were recovered as part of criminal investigations,” she said. “The reason why you want a ghost gun is specifically because it’s unserialized and can’t be traced.”

Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri's gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify on the fourth day of the trial (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A ruling on Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming care is likely to come by the end of the year, with the trial complete and attorneys’ reports due within 30 days.

After a 13-day trial ended last week, Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter waived closing statements and asked instead for plaintiffs and defendants to submit statements of facts and findings. Both sides presented thick stacks of evidence, with seven approximately five-inch binders sitting on Carter’s bench throughout proceedings.

Without a jury, Carter — who was assigned to preside over the Cole County case — will rule on the constitutionality of the law.

Carter’s questions at the start of the trial sounded like someone becoming familiar with the subject, asking what a nonbinary gender identity means and clarifying definitions.

But in the trial’s final days, his inquiries were more frequent and challenging for witnesses, digging into the arguments and searching for the point in which gender-affirming medication for minors switches from unlawful to lawful.

The trial comes after transgender minors, their families and health care providers challenged the constitutionality of a 2023 law restricting physicians from prescribing gender-affirming medical care to minors. It also bars Missouri Medicaid from covering gender-affirming treatment for adults and restricts prisoners from getting the care in state prisons.

Carter asked many of the questions to the state’s expert witness, Dr. Farr Curlin, a professor at Duke who specializes in medical ethics.

“So tell me your thoughts on the intersection,” Carter asked during Curlin’s testimony last Wednesday. “The state has an interest in preventing people from making life-altering mistakes, and plaintiffs have the right to seek (desired medical care).”

Curlin said the problem lies in children’s inability to consent. Typically, parents consent for their child, whereas a minor’s agreement is labeled assent.

“The norm should be the same norm that is practiced throughout pediatric ethics and it is: Is this intervention in the medical best interest of the child?” Curlin said.

A large piece of the case is whether there is medical consensus on the efficacy of medical transition.

Large medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, a group founded in 1930 with 67,000 member physicians, support gender-affirming care for minors. Other organizations outside the medical mainstream — like the 700-member American College of Pediatricians which was formed in 2002 — are outspoken against the treatment.

Plaintiffs’ experts reviewed research showing positive effects of medical transition, and people who have benefited from gender-affirming care in Missouri as minors testified. The attorney general’s office, which was defending the law, tried to diminish the testimony of these experts by claiming that because most provide gender-affirming care —either by writing letters of support as a mental health provider or prescribing medication — they financially benefit from ensuring it remains legal. 

Plaintiffs waved off these concerns. 

“Only to the state of Missouri, and without any sense of irony, is actually having experience and expertise a conflict,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney with Lambda Legal, told reporters.

The state’s expert witnesses included physicians who are outspoken about their disapproval of gender-affirming care, though many had never treated a minor for gender dysphoria. During the testimony of Alabama-based plastic surgeon Dr. Patrick Lappert, attorneys showed images of gender-affirming surgeries and detailed the process and risks of infection.

In 2022, a federal court in North Carolina ruled that state health plans excluding gender-affirming care violated the Equal Protection Clause. In that case, the judge tossed out parts of the testimony of  Lappert and Dr. Stephen Levine, who also testified last week as an expert for the state of Missouri.

Tom Bastian, spokesman for the ACLU of Missouri, told The Independent in emailed answers the case’s attorneys oversaw that the state’s argument is not sufficient to justify the law. Specifically, he pointed to what he deemed a lack of expertise among the state’s expert witnesses.

“None of the state’s purported expert witnesses practice in this field, except for one, and the one who does agrees that medical interventions for gender dysphoria can be appropriate for some patients,” Bastian wrote. “Plaintiffs’ doctors, their experts and every major medical organization in the United States all agree that, in certain cases, gender-affirming medical care can be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults.”

Another expert called by the Missouri attorney general’s office last week was John Michael Bailey. He received skepticism from Carter after it was revealed that he believes convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky is innocent. Bailey has been criticized for a retracted research article on gender dysphoria in adolescents and was the subject of an investigation by Northwestern University after he demonstrated a sex toy in an extracurricular lecture.

The Independent sent questions to the attorney general’s office, including asking about criticism of its expert witnesses, but did not receive a response.

Four people who had once identified as transgender but stopped treatment, known as “detransitioners,” also testified last about their regrets. Only one of the four received medical care in Missouri, and he was an adult when he began his transition.

“The adults that were in the room that should have been protecting them failed to do so,” Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a podcast late last month before the trial began.

The state also introduced academic articles describing the evidence behind gender-affirming care for minors as “too limited,” both in cross-examination and through their witnesses’ testimony.

Carter asked if the law could be peeled back if research showed treatments’ success. The state’s restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors is set to expire in August of 2027 — though lawmakers have publicly discussed removing the sunset clause.

“Are you saying the kids don’t have a choice until we get further evidence showing the efficacy of these treatments?” Carter asked Curlin, the Duke medical professor. “If the studies show that this treatment is efficacious, then where do we wind up?”

“It’s not just, is it efficacious?” Curlin said. “Is it efficacious, and is it reliable enough and substantial enough to warrant the risks that these treatments bring?”

“What if the drug companies come out tomorrow and say, ‘You can take this drug, and it is absolutely reversible,” Carter asked.

Curlin said the “treatments are absolutely counter to the well-working of this patient’s health.” The medications and surgeries are not ethical in a body that is functioning well, he said.

The state repeatedly presented talk therapy as an option to treat gender dysphoria, which is distress arising from one’s body not matching gender identity.

Plaintiffs said therapy alone will not treat many cases of gender dysphoria, making medication medically necessary.

On the first day of the trial, a young man testifying under the name John Doe told the court that therapy was not enough for him. His first therapist said he was “going through a phase,” and his dysphoria only worsened.

A second, affirming therapist helped him as he began to dress more like himself at the age of 7, he said. His fear only worsened as puberty approached, and he attributes his thriving social life and success in college to his access to medication.

“It felt like once I started to receive (testosterone) shots, my overall was uphill from there,” he said. “The confidence I gained from having my body reflect who I am and what I was feeling was impactful throughout my entire life.”

Doe’s mother also testified later in the trial.

Carter noted there was “heartfelt testimony on both sides” from parents, asking about the issue of parental rights when the state withholds a type of care from their child. He discussed the Right to Try Act, which allows patients to access experimental medications for life-threatening conditions.

He also looked at the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, which had an accelerated clinical trial phase in order to give the public access sooner. The vaccine could potentially serve as a precedent of giving access to a medication without longitudinal testing.

Carter’s ruling is unlikely to be the last, with similar cases in other states appealing all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He noted the likelihood of an appeal, saying he would accept exhibits to add to the case’s file for future courts to look at, though they would not determine his ruling.

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a lengthy and partly redacted motion Wednesday that charts special counsel Jack Smith’s final argument before November that former President Donald Trump acted in a private capacity when he co-conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Much of the motion concerns Trump’s interactions with individuals in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he sought to disrupt election results, Smith alleged.

The document, due on Chutkan’s desk late last month, is central to reanimating the case after months of delay as Trump argued for complete criminal immunity from the government’s fraud and obstruction charges related to his actions after the 2020 presidential contest, which Joe Biden won.

The U.S. Supreme Court returned Trump’s case to Chutkan after ruling that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for core constitutional acts, presumed immunity for acts on the perimeter of official duties, and no immunity for personal ones. At that point it became clear that the case against the Republican presidential nominee would not be tried prior to Election Day.

Smith’s superseding indictment shortly thereafter retained all four felony counts against Trump, and Chutkan is tasked with parsing which allegations can stand in light of the Supreme Court decision.

In his unsealed 165-page motion, Smith outlines Trump’s alleged plots with private lawyers and political allies — names redacted — to ultimately deliver false slates of electors to Congress so that he appeared the winner over Biden in the seven states.

“Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role,” Smith wrote.

Trump slammed the court filing on social media in numerous posts, writing in a mix of upper and lowercase letters that “Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.”

“The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate. The DOJ has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign. This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election,” he continued in just one of his many reactions on his platform, Truth Social.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, faced Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, in a vice presidential debate on Tuesday night.

Here are key arguments from Smith’s filing, which alleges efforts by Trump and allies to subvert voters’ will during the last presidential election:

Arizona

Smith detailed calls to and communications with various Arizona officials, including the governor and speaker of the Arizona state House, arguing the interactions were made in Trump’s “capacity as a candidate.”

• “The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth — and thus their knowledge of falsity — when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the Government will introduce several instances of this pattern, in which the defendant and conspirators’ lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators’ claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona; five days later, it was ‘beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote’: three weeks later, ‘the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000’; days after that, the assertion was 32,000; and ultimately the conspirators landed back where they started at 36,000 — a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.”

Georgia

Smith plans to introduce into evidence Trump’s communications, in his personal capacity, with Georgia’s attorney general, including a call on Dec. 8, 2020, and to the secretary of state.

• Trump “had early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false. Around mid-November, Campaign advisor [redacted] told the defendant that his claim that a large number of dead people had voted in Georgia was false. The defendant continued to press the claim anyway, including in a press appearance on November 29, when he suggested that a large enough number of dead voters had cast ballots to change the outcome of the election in Georgia.”

• “In the post-election period, [redacted] also took on the role of updating the defendant on a near-daily basis on the Campaign’s unsuccessful efforts to support any fraud claims…. He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit.’ [Redacted] was privy in real time to the findings of the two expert consulting firms the Campaign retained to investigate fraud claims — [redacted] and [redacted] — and discussed with the defendant their debunkings on all major claims. For example, [redacted] told the defendant that Georgia’s audit disproved claims that [redacted] had altered votes.”

Michigan

The document details an Oval Office meeting Trump held with Michigan’s Senate majority leader and speaker of the House on Nov. 20, 2020, during which Trump tried to acquire evidence of voter fraud in Detroit.

• “Despite failing to establish any valid fraud claims, [redacted] followed up with [redacted] and [redacted] and attempted to pressure them to use the Michigan legislature to overturn the valid election result.”

Michigan and Pennsylvania

The filing said that directly following the 2020 election, Trump and his “private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes.”

• “For example, on November 4, [redacted]—a Campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant—tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant.”

• “When a colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, [redacted] responded ‘Make them riot’ and ‘Do it!!!’ The defendant’s Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant’s claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.”

Michigan voting machines

Smith will argue that Trump, outside his official presidential duties, tried to persuade political allies in Michigan to sway the election in his favor.

• Among the evidence he will introduce: The former president held a meeting, “private in nature,” with Michigan legislators at the White House.

• Smith also wrote that “In mid-December, the defendant spoke with RNC Chairwoman [redacted] and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been related on December 13 that purported to identify flaws in the use of [redacted] machines in Antrim County, Michigan. [Redacted] refused, telling the defendant that she already had discussed this report with [redacted] Michigan’s Speaker of the House, who had told her that the report was inaccurate. [Redacted] conveyed to the defendant [redacted] exact assessment: the report was ‘f—— nuts.’”

Nevada

In Nevada, Trump allegedly ignored warnings about spreading lies about the state’s election results. Smith wrote: “Notwithstanding the RNC Chief Counsel’s warning, the defendant re-tweeted and amplified news of the lawsuit on November 24, calling it ‘Big News!’ that a Nevada Court had agreed to hear it. But the defendant did not similarly promote the fact that within two weeks, on December 4, the Nevada District Court dismissed Law v. Whitmer, finding in a detailed opinion that ‘there is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud,’ including through the signature-match machines, and that Biden won the election in the state.”

• Trump continued to repeat false claims in tweets and speeches “as a candidate, not as an office holder,” Smith wrote.

Pennsylvania 

In the Keystone State, officials warned Trump there was no smoke and no fire related to election fraud in the commonwealth, Smith wrote.

• “Two days after the election, on November 6, the defendant called [redacted], the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party—the entity responsible for supporting Republican candidates in the commonwealth at the federal, state and local level. [Redacted] had a prior relationship with the defendant, including having represented him in litigation in Pennsylvania after the 2016 presidential election. The defendant asked [redacted] how, without fraud, he had gone from winning Pennsylvania on election day to trailing in the day afterward. Consistent with what Campaign staff already had told the defendant, [redacted] confirmed that it was not fraud; it was that there were roughly 1,750,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in Pennsylvania, which were expected to be eighty percent for Biden. Over the following two months, the defendant spread false claims of fraud in Pennsylvania anyway.”

• “In early November, in a Campaign meeting, when the defendant suggested that more people in Pennsylvania voted than had checked in to vote, Deputy Campaign Manager [redacted] corrected him.”

Wisconsin

Smith wrote Trump ignored reality in Wisconsin as well.

• “On November 29, a recount that the defendant’s campaign had petitioned and paid for confirmed that Biden had won in Wisconsin — and increased the defendant’s margin of defeat. On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Campaign’s election lawsuit there. As a result, on December 21, Wisconsin’s Governor signed a certificate of final determination confirming the prior certificate of ascertainment that established Biden’s electors as the valid electors for the state.”

Trump responded by rebuking the Wisconsin Supreme Court judge who had signed the majority opinion that rejected the lawsuit, forcing the state marshals responsible for the judge’s security to enhance protection due to a rise in “threatening communications.”

Fake electors 

Smith alleged that as Trump and co-conspirators faltered at overturning states’ official election results, they turned their attention to fake slates of electors.

As early as December 2020, Trump and his allies “developed a new plan regarding targeted states that the defendant had lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin): to organize the people who would have served as the defendant’s electors had he won the popular vote, and cause them to sign and send to Pence, as President of the Senate, certificates in which they falsely represent themselves as legitimate electors who had cast electoral votes for the defendant,” Smith wrote.

Trump and his allies lied to Vice President Mike Pence heading toward Jan. 6, “telling him that there was substantial election fraud and concealing their orchestration of the plan to manufacture fraudulent elector slates, as well as their intention to use the fake slates to attempt to obstruct the congressional certification.”

Trump’s alleged lies to Pence and the public “created a tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”

The filing details numerous people, including Trump, pressuring Pence for weeks to use his role overseeing Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote to overturn the election results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Pence, once again, told Trump he would not go along with the plan.

“So on January 6, the defendant sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral vote and to obstruct the certification.”

“Although the attack on the Capitol successfully delayed the certification for approximately six hours, the House and Senate resumed the Joint Session at 11:35 p.m. But the conspirators were not done.”

The filing alleges a co-conspirator once again urged Pence to “violate the law” by delaying the certification for 10 days. He refused.

Pressure on Pence

Smith must prove that Trump’s pressure on Pence was outside of their official duties together, and therefore can not be considered immune from prosecution.

Smith plans to introduce evidence of private phone calls and conversations between Trump and his VP, including some with campaign staff, essentially tying their interactions to their interests as those seeking office again, “as running mates in the post-election period.” Smith also plans to highlight that Pence’s role in certifying the election was largely ceremonial and within the realm of the Senate, and strictly outside the bounds of the Oval Office.  Among Smith’s points made in his motion:

• “Because the Vice President’s role is and has always been ministerial, rather than substantive or discretionary, it is difficult to imagine an occasion in which a President would have any valid reason to try to influence it. As such, criminalizing a President’s efforts to affect the Vice President’s role as the President of the Senate overseeing the certification of Electoral College results would not jeopardize an Executive Branch function or authority.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The Missouri Supreme Court declined to force an investigation into donations to Attorney General Andrew Bailey connected to a witness in a case his office was handling.

In a filing Tuesday evening, the judges denied a request from Lucas Cierpiot — son of state Sen. Mike Cierpiot — to require the disciplinary arm of the court to investigate donations from Micheal Ketchmark and his law firm to a political action committee supporting Bailey. 

Ketchmark, a prominent attorney and large political donor, was called as a witness in a disability discrimination case filed by Lucas Cierpiot’s brother, Patrick, against the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Bailey’s office was defending the state.

After Ketchmark’s law firm donated to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC, Lucas Cierpiot filed a complaint with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, accusing Bailey of using his position as attorney general for personal political gain.

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

GOP legislator’s son asks Supreme Court to order inquiry into donations to Missouri AG

Cierpiot’s complaint was dismissed in March. He asked for further review, but it was dismissed again in May. He then sought an order from the state Supreme Court to force an investigation.

In an email, Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said the court “rightfully denied the frivolous petition” and that Bailey had not violated the rules of professional conduct for attorneys.

Cierpiot said in a text message that he was “very disappointed” by the court’s decision. 

“Missouri really is the ‘Show Me State,’ Cierpiot said. “Isn’t it? ‘Show Me’ just how unethical the Missouri courts can be.”

Cierpiot’s was one of several accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who took office last year after being appointed by Gov. Mike Parson. Bailey is now running for a full term. 

This summer, he narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a defendant in his own case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his license because of the meetings, according to a filing from the county’s attorneys.

Last year, Bailey withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by Warrenton Oil and Torch Electronics regarding video game machines that offer cash prizes. The attorney general’s office bowed out of the case following donations from PACs connected to the companies’ lobbyist. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

Bailey was also the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office after he falsely blamed the Hazelwood School District’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student.

Patrick Cierpiot named Ketchmark as a witness in the underlying lawsuit in May 2022, saying he had urged a Parson staffer not to fire Cierpiot, who was recovering from a bicycle wreck and struggling to keep up with his workload.

The following January, Ketchmark donated $2,825, the maximum that an individual can give, to Bailey’s campaign. Bailey received a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C. by the end of the month.

Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. The firm then gave an in-kind donation of $9,216.53.

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Department of Economic Development and allowed the agency to hire a private law firm to handle the case. At the time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex litigation.” She said Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest in the case.

In rejecting Lucas Cierpiot’s ethics complaint, the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said he failed to allege any violation of the rules of professional conduct. The complaint only outlined the donations from Ketchmark’s law firm to the pro-Bailey PAC, not the donation from Ketchmark to Bailey’s campaign committee. The ethics office drew a distinction between those.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the office said in a court filing responding to Cierpiot’s petition to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel said that before declining to investigate, officials verified that Ketchmark hadn’t contributed to Bailey’s campaign committee, apparently missing the January 2023 donations.

The Supreme Court’s order did not say why it was denying Cierpiot’s request. 

This story was updated at 12:25 p.m. to include comments from Bailey’s office and Cierpiot received after its initial publication.

ACLU of Missouri attorney Gillian Wilcox takes notes while a witness testifies in Missouri's gender-affirming care trial in Cole County Circuit Court (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s defense of a state law barring minors from beginning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will depend on whether the judge in the case puts stock in expert witnesses touting retracted studies and conspiracy theories about Jerry Sandusky.

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is presiding over a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s gender-affirming care restrictions, will have to weigh the credibility of expert witnesses alongside his judgment.

Questions of credibility came up Tuesday, when the Missouri Attorney General’s Office called as a witness John Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern who testified about his now-retracted study entitled “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” which concludes that adolescents identify as transgender as a result of social contagion.

But it was his social media post about the accusers of Jerry Sandusky that appeared to concern Carter.

Sandusky, a former college football coach, was convicted of molesting young boys over a period of at least 15 years. Bailey repeatedly posted on social media that he believes Sandusky is innocent.

“You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?” Carter asked.

“I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked,” Bailey told him.

“Mmhmm,” Carter replied.

Bailey said he had listened to a podcast and lauded the work of conservative commentator John Ziegler.

“Do you know (Ziegler)? Have you talked to anybody that was an eyewitness in that case?” Carter asked.

“I have read testimony, but I have not talked to anyone,” Bailey said.

Although the underlying case was not about Sandusky, the exchange may have chiseled away at Bailey’s credibility and showed a greater pattern of basing conclusions on secondary sources.

Bailey’s research on transgender youth has been retracted, which he chalked up to pressure from activists.

The academic journal that retracted his article cited an issue with informed consent protocol, meaning participants didn’t know their responses would be in an article. On cross-examination, the circumstances of his research became clearer.

To investigate his hypothesis of whether “rapid onset gender dysphoria” caused a rise in referrals to gender clinics, Bailey surveyed parents and guardians who interacted with the website ParentsofROGDKids.com, a website for parents who believe their child has rapid onset gender dysphoria.

He said the study’s co-author Suzanna Diaz isn’t a researcher, so she didn’t create the survey with typical informed-consent procedures. He didn’t explain that Diaz is a pseudonym.

He knew Diaz was associated with ParentsofROGDKids.com but didn’t know her real name and if she ran the website.

Diaz had created the questionnaire to “weed out troublemakers.”

When Bailey looked into detransitioners and desisters, which are people who have stopped or reversed gender-affirming care, he looked to the website Reddit and looked at groups titled “detrans” and “desist.”

Plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert asked if he verified that participants had previously been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Bailey admitted that he had not.

The other defense expert on the stand Tuesday was Dr. Daniel Weiss, an endocrinologist from Utah.

For 10 years in Ohio, Weiss accepted transgender adults as patients that needed cross-sex hormones, but later decided the intervention was harmful to prescribe.

“I’m opposed to it medically,” Weiss said of adults using cross-sex hormones to transition. “I think there’s no scientific evidence to support it. But if someone wants to do it, and they’re adequately informed, they can do it.”

His testimony included a look at adverse event reporting of puberty blockers, which he does not prescribe, and the discussion of risks to gender-affirming care.

When asked to compare the risks of puberty blockers to aspirin, he couldn’t make a direct comparison.

“It’s hard to compare,” he said. “With any intervention, you want to balance risk and benefit and look at all the treatment options.”

Gillian Wilcox, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, asked if he has published a peer-reviewed article on gender dysphoria. He hadn’t.

“My article, if I were to write one, would be rejected by most medical journals because there is no good treatment,” Weiss said. “I call it child-harming treatment. There is no good intervention.”

He has testified in favor of state bans on gender-affirming care for minors. He told Wilcox that the Center for Christian Virtue, an advocacy group with anti-LGBTQ views, asked him to testify and he was paid to prepare his testimony.

He does not have clinical experience with minors.

In the state’s pretrial brief, Solicitor General Joshua Divine wrote that defendants will only need to prove “medical and scientific uncertainty” to show that state lawmakers are allowed to enact restrictions on gender-affirming care.

Although the state has entered the trial confident in the task ahead, credibility may limit what the judge will consider from its experts.

Other witnesses Tuesday included parents, one of which lives in Chicago, who disagreed with their children about their transition.

A former case worker of the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital testified Monday in the trial challenging Missouri's restrictions on gender-affirming care (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

The former caseworker whose account of her time working at a pediatric gender clinic in St. Louis jumpstarted the legislative push to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors testified in defense of Missouri’s restriction on Monday.

Jamie Reed, who for four and a half years worked as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center, was the first witness called by the state in the two-week trial over the constitutionality of the law. Reed’s public statements and sworn affidavit about her experience at the clinic were the genesis for Missouri lawmakers prioritizing the ban and spurred broad investigations by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office into practitioners statewide.

Reed testified as a fact witness, meaning she couldn’t speak as an expert but could provide insight into her experiences working at the Transgender Center. Many of Monday’s questions gravitated toward the records she kept — and later shared — that contained information on the center’s patients.

Under the 2023 law, health care providers can’t prescribe new gender-affirming care medications to minors or refer them for surgery, and the state’s Medicaid program is barred from paying for gender-affirming medical care for any age. Transgender Missourians, their families and health care providers filed a lawsuit in July 2023, calling the law unconstitutional because it discriminated against transgender people.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

Last week, plaintiffs called witnesses that testified that their medical record numbers and treatment information were listed in a document that Reed shared with Attorney General Andrew Bailey and at least one reporter.

When asked Thursday about his daughter’s information being shared, J.K. (who testified using his initials as a pseudonym) said he never consented to the information being spread.

“It’s confusing and mystifying,” he said. “I don’t know why this person would share our information. I have no idea what this person is up to.”

He didn’t interact with Reed, he said, apart from getting an email after an appointment with follow-up information from her. But somehow, his daughter’s information was in Reed’s table.

Elliott, a college student who went to the Transgender Center as a teenager and testified using only their first name, said Friday that Reed was never in appointments with them. Elliott is “terrified” that the attorney general has information related to their medical care.

“I don’t know what they’ll do with that information,” Elliott said. “I don’t think it’s any of (the state’s) business that I’m trans.”

Elliott also thought Reed’s affidavit, which was released to the public, described them in a paragraph that was so specific friends and family could identify them.

“I was extremely upset (when I read the affidavit),” Elliott said. “I didn’t think it was an accurate representation of the care I received at Wash U. There was a line I thought could represent me, and if so, I am angry that I was used without my permission.”

Reed testified on Monday that this part of her affidavit was describing multiple patients. Other paragraphs talking about “a patient” were also a compilation of more than one person, she said.

The affidavit was based on medical records, patient visits and “firsthand knowledge” she testified. 

Reed didn’t dispute that Elliott’s information was shared in a 23-page document that listed patients’ medical record numbers instead of names. She didn’t consider this private health information protected by federal law because someone would need a key with names alongside medical record numbers to identify patients.

She sent this data to Bailey after a subpoena, she testified, but she also sent it to a New York Times reporter.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Gillian Wilcox asked about the 300 pages sent to the reporter. Reed said she sent “redacted documents that contained no (private health information).”

Reed, for part of her time at the Transgender Center, tracked patients she was concerned about on a “red-flag list.” She called it that because red flags at the beach mean to “proceed with caution,” she testified.

There were 27 patients on the list, identified by name instead of medical record number. Reed says she monitored them with a nurse at the center who shared concerns with Reed that too many children were receiving cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.

Reed sent this list to Bailey in early February 2023 at the time of her affidavit, she said.

Other records she sent to Bailey include emails compiled from her Washington University email account, a list of therapists the center often referred patients to and copies of referral letters from therapists.

Reed told The Independent previously that she redacted names in the referral letters. This was not asked in court Monday.

Wilcox asked about a letter Reed sent Bailey in April 2024, long after she ended her employment with the Transgender Center.

The letter shared information from the center’s schedule that Reed believed showed the center was accepting new patients, despite public statements that it would not.

Reed currently works as executive director of the LGBT Courage Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates against gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

She recently traveled to the American Academy of Pediatrics convention in Florida to help volunteers “educate” pediatricians on gender-affirming care. A press release on the group’s participation described it as a “peaceful protest,” but Reed did not characterize the demonstration as a protest.

She wouldn’t answer whether she supported gender-affirming care for adults or not, though she had indicated support in prior testimony. She cited “changes in (her) personal life.”

At the beginning of questioning, she testified that her spouse was “detransitioning,” or stopping testosterone treatments. Sunday evening, her spouse’s perspective was published in The Free Press, the same website that launched Reed as a whistleblower in February 2023.

(Getty Images).

A rural Missouri fire district near Kansas City committed so many violations of the Missouri Sunshine Law that listing them separately wasn’t the best way to present them, attorney Jim Layton told Western District Court of Appeals during oral arguments.

Under questioning from Presiding Judge Thomas Chapman, Layton said he counted 46 violations committed in 11 meetings of the Western Cass Fire Protection board. The appeal brief gives a narrative of events, seeking to show a multiplicity of violations at any particular meeting, rather than individually enumerated violations for each meeting.

“We have to look at it and weigh the evidence in each one of these instances, and it just seems like it kind of was a shotgun approach on these,” Chapman said.

The nature of the appeal led to the format he chose, Layton said. Cass County Circuit Judge R. Michael Wagner entered a judgment against his client, Citizens for Transparency and Accountability, when he concluded his portion of the case during a June 2023 trial.

Wagner didn’t give any reasons for his decision in his judgment. The appeal is of that single act, so a narrative is the correct format, Layton said.

“I will confess that I struggled with how to draft points relied on in this case as much as I ever have on an appeal because of the nature of how this was decided below,” Layton said.

Wednesday’s hearing at the appeals court is just the latest round in battles, in and out of court, involving the fire district, based in Cleveland, that serves about 2,600 homes. The battling factions of the board have made numerous headlines, and the appeal drew the attention of three important voices for open government.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the Missouri Press Association and the Freedom Center of Missouri all wrote briefs urging the court to overturn the trial court. The issues involved are some of the most fundamental aspects of what constitutes proper notice of a meeting, how much can be added to an agenda after it is posted, and what information must be presented about an item to be considered.

“If you can obscure the matters that are actually going to be discussed and decided at a public meeting, then you can kind of slip under the public’s radar and address matters that otherwise members of the public would very much like to have input,” said Dave Roland, litigation director of the Freedom Center of Missouri.

An example from the Western Cass case is the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting, where the notice included an item called “special considerations,” with no more detail. What board members Kerri VanMeveren and Darvin Schildknecht didn’t know, and found out only when the agenda item was reached that evening, was that “special considerations” meant booting them off the board.

“I asked at the start of the meeting, before we adopted the agenda, ‘can you please explain what special considerations mean?’” VanMeveren said in an interview with The Independent. Board president “John Webb would not answer the question. And I kept saying, ‘I think the public has a right to know,’ and he just would not answer it.”

Defending the judgment on Wednesday, attorney Aaron Racine told the court that any violations that may have occurred were inadvertent, due to inexperience of new members.

Judge Alok Ahuja was skeptical of that as he looked at the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting agenda.

“What does special considerations mean?” he asked. “Special considerations of weather? Special considerations of finances? Special considerations of personnel?”

Even the phrasing of particular agenda items can be traced to inexperience, Racine said.

“I think those are the mitigating or exigent circumstances, and that you had an inexperienced board trying to comply with the law,” he said.

Origins of the dispute

VanMeveren won election to the district Board of Directors in 2020, running for the position after a brush fire spread onto her property in 2018 and she felt the tactics employed showed poor training.

“It was just kind of a clown show,” VanMeveren said.

When she became district treasurer, she said, she found that tax rates for a bond issue had been improperly calculated, bringing in excessive revenue.

A state auditor’s report in 2021, prepared in response to a residents’ petition, found problems with bidding procedures, budget information and Sunshine Law compliance. VanMeveren recruited new board members, including John Webb, a conservative Republican who unsuccessfully challenged then-U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler several times in the 4th Congressional District GOP primary. 

But she and Webb were soon battling over issues that included payroll expenses for contractors and a contract for lawn care at the firehouse, the Kansas City Star reported. In the late summer and early fall of 2022, three departments in Belton, Dolan-West Dolan and West Peculiar canceled their mutual aid agreements.

VanMeveren resigned as treasurer in May 2022 but remained on the board. A lawsuit was filed by the board to oust her and Schildknecht. It was dismissed when a recall effort began that succeeded in removing VanMeveren and Schildknecht in August 2023.

VanMeveren and Schildknecht formed Citizens for Transparency and Accountability and filed a countersuit, the case now in the hands of the Western District Court of Appeals.

They testified in the spring in favor of a bill that gives the State Auditor new power to investigate wrongdoing in local government. Instead of a time-consuming petition process, the auditor can now open a full audit if investigation of a complaint shows problems that require more attention. 

And the cost of the audit would be borne by the auditor’s office instead of taxpayers in the political subdivision being examined.

The new power is an important tool to help taxpayers, Schildknecht testified in a Missouri House hearing. 

“Over the years some people who come on the board who do want to try and do the right things, but I have also seen others who realize there is no outside agencies monitoring fire districts and take advantage of this, knowing there is nobody watching that they follow the laws,” he said.

The meaning of “tentative”

Widespread issues the case will address brought amicus, or friend of the court, briefs from the attorney general’s office, the press association and the Freedom Center of Missouri.

“Several issues raised in this appeal are brought to this office’s attention with increasing frequency in complaints filed by citizens against local public governmental bodies, in question-and-answer sessions during training programs, and phone call inquiries from the public and public governmental bodies,” Assistant Attorney General Jason Lewis wrote. “Unfortunately, many of these issues have not yet been conclusively addressed by Missouri’s appellate courts.”

Those questions include what an agenda must have when a meeting notice is posted and what can be added later.

“All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date, and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered,” the law states. 

The fire district board used the word tentative in the broadest sense. At one meeting in November 2022, Layton’s appeal brief states, the board approved “a contract for a medical director; creating and sending a newsletter throughout the district; adopting a program that would allow firefighters to reside at the fire station; changing the bid solicitation for one of the fire stations; an insurance rider for proof of loss; barring one director from taking photographs at the fire station; having and paying for a party; and purchasing a generator battery.”

None of those items were on the agenda.

No violation occurred when items were added, Racine told the judges.

“Tentative means what tentative means, and absent some statutory or court guidance as to what tentative means, we have to look to its plain meaning, which is subject to change going forward,” Racine said.

All three of the amicus briefs argued that tentative means subject to change for unforeseen reasons, such as a storm that prevents the meeting from being held or the absence of someone essential that prevents an item from being considered.

It cannot mean that new items can be added at will because the public, and their watchdogs, deserve full notice of the items to be considered, attorney Jean Maneke wrote for the press association.

“Reporters recognize that they cannot be everywhere at once and the agenda gives them the information they need to make the best use of their time,” Maneke wrote. “Like the public, the reporters rely on the agenda to inform them regarding which activities/issues will be addressed at each public meeting.”

Other meeting notice issues the appeal addresses are the amount of information that must be provided. Fire district notices often gave the least possible information, appellants argue, such as a resolution number and no other details under the heading “Banking” on the July 20, 2022, meeting.

During the same meeting, while on the agenda item with the heading “reports,” the board adopted changes to the duties of some personnel without any indication that was the intent.

“It’s crucial that public governmental bodies not be able to shoehorn in agenda items at the last minute, and that’s why they need to provide an acceptable level of specificity when it comes to what they’re going to be considering and voting on,” Roland said.

The attorney general’s brief also argues that notices must provide details that show the intent of the action. 

“That means that a public governmental body cannot hide an elephant in a mouse hole by using vague or excessively broad terms to hide what the body intends to do,” Lewis wrote. “The tentative agenda must be specific enough for the public to be able to make an informed decision about whether to attend the meeting.”

The court could create a test that would help agencies in the preparation of meeting notices and agendas, Lewis wrote.

“The Attorney General’s Office is eager for resolution of these issues at the appellate level,” Lewis wrote, “which will provide both this office and the public with significant guidance in resolving citizens’ Sunshine Law complaints, providing education to local public governmental bodies, and seeking enforcement when appropriate.”

Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri's gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify Thursday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

After three days of battling over scientific papers and expert testimony, the trial of a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming treatments on Thursday turned to the impact the law has on patients and providers.

Nicole Carr, a nurse practitioner at Southampton Community Healthcare in St. Louis, said anxiety, fear and depression first increased in transgender patients when Attorney General Andrew Bailey published an emergency rule that established barriers to care in April 2023.

“No one thinks about how these laws affect the actual people they are supposed to protect and they are supposed to serve,” she said.

Patients were crying in the clinic in fear, she testified.

“I’m trying to give them hope that they don’t have to fear being in Missouri, that they don’t have to fear coming to me as a provider, that they can move past this,” Carr said. “It’s sad because I’m referring a lot of people to therapy that, before these rules, were fine.”

She worries about youth in foster care, which she worked with frequently in a previous position. Transgender teenagers in foster care often must wait until they turn 18 to go to the doctor alone for assessment to obtain hormone-replacement therapy.

But if they are on Medicaid, as most are soon after foster care, Missouri won’t pay for the treatment.

“(The law) has impacted the quality of care I can give my patients when I know the solution to their problem is out there and I can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Carr and Southampton healthcare are among 11 plaintiffs hoping to block enforcement of a 2023 law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for minors. Other plaintiffs include parents of transgender children, transgender adolescents, other medical care providers and organizations supporting gender-affirming care.

Their attorneys began putting witnesses on the stand Monday in the Cole County Circuit Court trial scheduled to continue through next week. The lawsuit asks Judge Craig Carter, assigned to the case from Wright County, to declare the law unconstitutional, alleging violations of equal protection, due process and other rights guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution.

Although the law does not ban counseling or the continuation of treatments begun before it passed, several providers ceased all gender-affirming treatments for minors soon after it took effect on Aug. 28, 2023. First University of Missouri Health, then Washington University  in St. Louis, ended their programs, citing the threat of future litigation allowed in the law.

Neither provider is a party to the lawsuit.

Over the first three days of the trial, assistant attorney generals defending the law have repeatedly sought to discredit plaintiffs’ expert witnesses. The painstaking cross examinations have slowed the pace of the trial to two experts per day and led to a late recess on Wednesday.

Carter, however, has declined to limit the cross-examination, despite arguments from plaintiffs’ attorneys that it means the trial will exceed the time allotted to complete it.

During cross-examination, members of the defense team have read scientific articles, news articles and editorials on gender-affirming care. Almost invariably, that leads to objections that the exhibits are new.

Carter has allowed reading as a way to challenge the credibility of witnesses by  showing deficiencies in their testimony, such as bias or poor memory.

“They seem to be reading a lot of newspaper articles and a lot of opinion pieces,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for plaintiffs, told reporters. “If they wanted to introduce the opinion of some random person in the United Kingdom, they could have called them.”

During one question to Dr. Armand Matheny Antommaria from Solicitor General Joshua Divine, plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert objected, arguing that it was as if Divine was testifying himself.

It came as Antommaria, a pediatric hospitalist and bioethicist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, answered questions slowly, often with a “yes sir” or “no sir,” correcting Divine’s questions.

“If you go to the key findings, the statement you’ve pulled out is not part of the key findings,” he said, after a question in which Divine asked about a singular sentence of a scientific article. The context is important, Antommaria told him, saying the overall report was the opposite of Divine’s characterization.

Divine also asked  if Antommaria’s religious beliefs or divinity degree should disqualify him as an expert.

“Given the nature of that particular degree, that does not disqualify myself,” he said.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, an adolescent medicine physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and medical director of the hospital’s center for transgender youth health and development, testified about her research linking distress about breast development to depression and anxiety. She also discussed benefits of gender-affirming care she has seen in her clinical experience.

Hal Frampton, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, brought one of the 11 three-ring binders prepared for the Olson-Kennedy testimony to the podium. He flipped through the approximately three-inch binder, presenting studies and articles to question Olson-Kennedy’s research and concluding with videos from talks she gave years ago.

In one talk, she said people “get worked up” about certain surgical procedures that are part of gender affirming care.

Frampton asked if she doesn’t like people that get worked up. Olson-Kennedy said she was emphasizing the difference between gender-affirming surgeries.

“The seriousness of getting a sterilizing surgery is more severe than someone who needs a chest surgery,” she said.

He also asked about an interview she gave in which she spoke about being involved in social justice efforts.

“People being able to get access to medically necessary care is an advocacy issue,” she responded.

The defense is scheduled to begin arguments Monday, with a scheduled final day of Oct. 4.

The Cole County Courthouse is hosting a trial challenging the state's restrictions on gender-affirming care, bringing in a judge from Wright County to oversee the bench trial (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A case that will determine whether Missouri can continue restricting adolescents’ access to gender-affirming care began Monday in Cole County Circuit Court.

The plaintiffs — which include transgender minors, gender-affirming care providers and loved ones — will argue that medical treatments for gender dysphoria are “safe and effective,” attorney Omar Gonzalez Pagan said in opening arguments.

The state will defend the 2023 law restricting gender-affirming care by looking into the risks of the treatment and highlighting those who have regretted medical transitions.

“These kids need compassionate, evidence-based medicine. But what they’ve been doing for the past 15 years isn’t evidence-based,” Solicitor General Joshua Divine said in his opening statement.

Defendants include Gov. Mike Parson, who signed the bill into law, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is responsible for enforcing the law.

Both parties plan to call a host of expert and fact witnesses, and attorneys have requested a week for each side to present evidence.

On the first day of the trial, which will be heard by Circuit Judge Craig Carter without a jury, attorneys argued over which experts were most qualified to speak on the efficacy and risks of gender-affirming care.

“(Plaintiffs’ experts) are the type of people that are qualified to testify as to this type of care,” Gonzalez Pagan said. “The state’s experts, with one exception, do not have this sort of experience.”

Divine said that plaintiffs’ experts benefit financially from gender-affirming care, so they have their “financial reputations” at stake. He defended his witnesses’ qualifications, calling one a “victim of cancel culture” when a journal article was retracted.

The first expert called to testify was Dr. Aron Janssen, vice chair of clinical affairs at the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. A majority of the patients in his psychiatry practice are transgender or gender-nonconforming children and adolescents, he said, and he has published approximately 24 articles in academic journals.

Jason Orr, an attorney for the plaintiffs, asked him about the state’s claims.

One claim is that gender dysphoria is a self-diagnosed condition because the symptoms are self-reported. Janssen said physicians base a diagnosis on questions to patients and loved ones, like other psychiatric conditions he treats.

“If that was a standard to base diagnosis, we wouldn’t have depression, anxiety, migraines,” he said.

The state will bring “detransitioners,” or people who began transitioning to a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and later stopped. One received gender-affirming care in Missouri as an adult, but none received the care as a minor in Missouri, attorneys discussed in a virtual hearing last Friday.

Orr asked Janssen if there’s any scientific literature about those who stop their transition.

“The majority of patients who detransition do so because of external pressures but not because of internal pressures or regret,” Janssen said. “For some, transition is a wonderful experience… For others, it means you are kicked out of your family, lose your job.”

Patrick Sullivan, with the attorney general’s office, used several documents to challenge Janssen during cross-examination. Some were not on the list of items the defense plans to submit as evidence, but Carter allowed the exhibits for questions only.

Some of the documents were studies, including the over 400-page Cass Review published earlier this year. The report was a systematic review commissioned in England that concluded that there was weak evidence to support cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth.

Sullivan presented Janssen a document called an “evidence pyramid,” with systematic reviews at the top as the best form of scientific literature.

Janssen said the Cass Review had a key flaw: the authors are not experienced in gender-affirming care and wouldn’t know the best factors to look at.

“When we look at what is involved in creating a good systematic review, having experience in the field is important,” he said. “When none of the authors work in the area, we have to take what they’re saying with a grain of salt.”

Sullivan interrupted him as Janssen explained the review’s flaws.

“He’s answering your question,” Carter said.

Sullivan’s questioning lasted around two hours, with multiple objections from plaintiffs as new exhibits came into the courtroom. The exhibits were largely studies out of Europe and articles from The New York Times and The Free Press.

Sullivan used an opinion article to question plaintiffs’ second expert, a clinical child psychologist.

The other witness to take the stand during the trial’s premiere day was a transgender man who transitioned at a young age in Missouri.

Arguments are scheduled to conclude Oct. 4.

A case that seeks to block enforcement of a state law restricting transgender minors' access to gender affirming care is scheduled for two weeks of debate in Cole County Circuit Court (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A lawsuit filed by transgender children and their parents challenging a one year-old Missouri law restricting minors from accessing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers heads to trial in Cole County Circuit Court beginning Monday. 

Plaintiffs are asking Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who typically serves in Wright County, to block the law’s enforcement.

Pretrial briefs filed by plaintiff’s attorneys and the Missouri Attorney General’s office, which is defending the state, have very little in common in the factual background of the case.

The parties have different definitions of gender-affirming care, with Solicitor General Joshua Divine writing that “gender transition interventions are at best experimental and at worst deeply harmful.” 

Gillian Wilcox, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, labeled the treatment “medically necessary, evidence-based and potentially lifesaving.”

“Gender-affirming medical care does not harm transgender youth,” she wrote. “To the contrary, it allows them to thrive.”

Both sides agree that transgender Missourians electing to start gender-affirming care have a condition called “gender dysphoria,” which is widely defined as distress arising from an incongruence between one’s gender identity and sex as assigned at birth.

But Divine argues this is purely a “psychiatric, not medical condition” and calls for talk therapy as an alternative to cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers.

“The worst thing that could befall plaintiffs from not receiving an injunction is that individuals seeking treatment for gender dysphoria will receive counseling instead of chemical and surgical interventions. That is no harm at all,” he wrote.

Plaintiffs point to therapy as an unsatisfactory alternative, meaning the law has taken away all avenues for this type of care. Wilcox argues that gender dysphoria was once categorized by the World Health Organization in a chapter on mental and behavioral disorders, under the name “gender identity disorder,” but has since been moved to a section on sexual health.

The sides both mark this 2013 change from “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria,” but Divine writes this in a shallower history that he says begins in 2007 when “clinicians in the United States started to experiment with surgical and chemical interventions.” 

Wilcox says gender-affirming medical care emerged in the 1920s, with the first clinics in the United States treating transgender patients in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Arguments in the case are scheduled to last approximately two weeks, though both sides have filed motions seeking to exclude the testimony of doctors and other expert witnesses that the opposing party has brought.

Plaintiffs — including families that have changed their child’s care plan because of the law, health care providers and advocacy groups — will argue that the law is unconstitutional. Additionally, they will try to prove that it is subject to higher scrutiny because it discriminates based on sex and “transgender status.”

Defendants — including Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Gov. Mike Parson, among others — argue the state had a compelling governmental interest in enacting and enforcing the law.

The litigation could also determine whether the state can lawfully exclude gender-affirming care coverage from the state’s Medicaid program and covered services in state prisons.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey meets with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kansas City (Photo provided by Andrew Bailey's campaign).

Eight months into his term as Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey withdrew his office from defending a state agency being sued by a legislator’s son for disability discrimination.

A few months earlier, his campaign and an affiliated political action committee accepted more than $150,000 in donations connected to a witness in the case.

Incensed by what he saw as the state’s top attorney using his office for political benefit, Lucas Cierpiot — whose brother Patrick filed the original lawsuit and whose father is GOP Sen. Mike Cierpiot — filed a formal complaint accusing Bailey of violating attorney conduct rules.

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, noted in an email that the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed Cierpiot’s complaint without investigating. And legal experts interviewed by The Independent aren’t so sure taking money from a witness would warrant sanctions. 

But Cierpiot remains convinced the attorney general violated ethics rules. He’s now asking the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene and order an investigation. 

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

While Bailey’s office was still in charge of the case, his campaign for reelection launched. 

The first donor to his fledgling campaign committee was Michael Ketchmark, who gave $2,825, the maximum that an individual can donate. By the end of January 2023, Bailey would receive a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C.

According to Patrick Cierpiot’s lawsuit, Ketchmark is a material witness in his case because he spoke to Gov. Mike Parson’s chief of staff in an attempt to keep Cierpiot from being fired from the Missouri Department of Economic Development. 

Ketchmark is a prominent attorney and donor in Missouri politics, including giving huge contributions to Parson. Patrick Cierpiot said he has known Ketchmark for 30 years.

In an email, Ketchmark said he has not been called as a witness by the state in Patrick Cierpiot’s or any other case. Court records in Kansas show Cierpiot called Ketchmark as a witness. Ketchmark did not respond to a question about whether he spoke to the governor’s staff on Cierpiot’s behalf. 

“I have no idea why Patrick was fired, and the fact that Patrick listed me as a witness does not stop me from supporting a political candidate,” said Ketchmark, whose law firm this year alone gave the PAC supporting Bailey $1.1 million.

Todd Graves gets high-powered help lobbying for University of Missouri curator position

Attorneys contacted by The Independent said there is not a specific rule in Missouri barring Bailey from accepting donations from a witness. But Peter Joy, who teaches legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it creates a public confidence issue.

“In terms of public perception,” Joy said, “it raises a lot of questions.”

When someone is running for prosecutor or attorney general, Joy said, it’s a “delicate balance” between being a lawyer and a politician.

“They still owe their primary obligation to the oath that they took to fulfill their elected office,” Joy said, “but…they have a campaign committee that’s soliciting people for contributions and they’re attending fundraisers and they’re speaking before groups where they’re hoping to generate funds to run their campaign and get votes, eventually, to retain their office.”  

Lucas Cierpiot’s filing is the latest in a series of accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who narrowly avoided being questioned under oath last month about his contact with a defendant in the state’s case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his law license in that dispute, according to a filing from Jackson County’s attorneys. 

Last year, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by companies that operate video game machines that offer cash prizes. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

The withdrawal came after Bailey’s PAC accepted large campaign contributions from political action committees linked to a lobbyist for the two companies that brought the lawsuit against the state — Torch Electronics and Warrenton Oil.

It’s also the second time Bailey has been the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office. Earlier this year, the Hazelwood School District lodged a formal complaint about Bailey after his office falsely blamed the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student. 

Patrick Cierpiot sued the Missouri Department of Economic Development two years after he was fired from the department. He said he requested accommodations after breaking his wrist in a bicycle wreck because he was struggling to write and type to keep up with his workload but was fired instead. In its response, the state accused Cierpiot of fraud.

In Cierpiot’s amended lawsuit in May 2022, he named Ketchmark as having urged a Parson staffer not to fire him. 

The following January brought the Ketchmark-affiliated donations to Bailey’s campaign. Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s law firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. 

A few weeks after that, Liberty and Justice received an in-kind donation from the firm totaling $9,216.53. Bailey helped raise money for Liberty and Justice PAC, which, in turn, supported his successful GOP primary run for a full term as attorney general. 

Bailey’s campaign and the PAC received a combined $151,166.53 in cash and in-kind donations from Ketchmark, his relatives and his law firm and associates while Bailey was defending the state in the Cierpiot lawsuit.

Missouri AG drops out of gambling case after taking donations from companies suing state

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from the case and allowed the department to hire a private law firm to handle it. At that time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest and his office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex cases.” 

Lucas Cierpiot filed his complaint four months later in December 2023. It was dismissed by the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel in March. Cierpiot asked for further review, but the case was dismissed again in May.

In response, Cierpiot filed a motion with the state Supreme Court last month asking that it order an investigation. 

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel responded to Lucas Cierpiot’s filing with the Missouri Supreme Court, saying he could not insist on an investigation. It went on to say Cierpiot’s complaint didn’t allege a violation of the rules of professional conduct because it outlined donations from Ketchmark’s firm to the PAC, not from Ketchmark himself to Bailey’s campaign committee.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the response filing says. 

The filing, signed by Chief Disciplinary Counsel Laura Elsbury, claims that before declining to investigate Cierpiot’s allegations, officials “independently verified that (Ketchmark) had not contributed to (Bailey’s) campaign committee.”

But that was wrong. Ketchmark did contribute to Bailey’s campaign committee.

Elsbury said in an email she could not comment on the pending issue. Lucas Cierpiot did not immediately return a  request for comment.

In an interview, Patrick Cierpiot said he doesn’t think it is right for an attorney to take money from a witness.

“If it’s okay for Andrew Bailey to solicit and accept money from a case witness,” Patrick Cierpiot said, “then the Missouri courts are completely blown open for corruption.”

Rebecca Varney stands on the porch of her home in Edgar Springs in this 2020 photo. A judge has ordered the city to pay her and her attorney almost $80,000 for banning her from City Hall. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

A small Missouri city must deplete its bank accounts — except for enough money to keep the police force intact — to pay a judgment that found it violated a resident’s First Amendment rights and the Missouri Sunshine Law, a court ruled last week.

Phelps County Circuit Judge John Beger directed Edgar Springs to pay $47,886 immediately, put a tax increase on the November ballot and dedicate all general revenue of more than $2,500 a month to satisfying the $79,716 judgment entered in December 2023.

“Where, as here, a court of record has issued a judgment against a municipality, the municipality has both a legal and moral obligation to pay its debts and as long as there is no limitation on the municipality’s ability to pay those debts, the performance of this duty is not discretionary,” Beger wrote in the order issued Sept. 4.

In his 2023 order, Beger found that Edgar Springs — a town of 200 in southern Phelps County — had attempted to “intimidate and silence” Rebecca Varney by banning her from city hall for four years, and for holding several closed meetings with business that should have been conducted in public.

Varney, a longtime resident of the community, began looking into city finances after receiving a traffic ticket in 2018. She was concerned that the town’s police force was using traffic offenses as a means of generating revenue and began visiting city hall frequently to review documents.

Varney also circulated a petition for a state audit of the city, which found numerous problems, including Sunshine Law violations and financial management issues.

Beger ordered the city to pay Varney a nominal fine of $150 but also ordered the city to pay her costs in bringing the lawsuit.

The city filed an appeal, but dropped it in March.

Phelps County town drops appeal of $80,000 Missouri Sunshine Law judgment

In his order last week, Beger found that state law allows him to order the city to pay Varney all unrestricted funds, except the money necessary to pay the salaries of “the mayor, council, assessor, marshal, constable, attorney and a reasonable police force…”

State law also directs that the courts “shall make all necessary orders to secure the prompt and speedy payment of such debt.”

The city doesn’t pay the mayor or council a salary and has no marshal or constable, Beger noted. The city pays its attorney $1,000 a month and the two-person police force was paid $1,477 in the month of June.

Beger directed that all general fund money held by the city in excess of $10,000, and all new revenue in excess of $2,500 a month, should be dedicated to repaying Varney. He exempted accounts for the sewer utility, street maintenance and federal grants, which all have limits on how they can be used. 

“The court is sensitive to the fact that the city is small and has limited resources,” Beger wrote. “It is also sensitive to the fact that it was the city’s own choices that led to the final judgment debt it now owes to the plaintiff.”

As of Monday afternoon, the town had not made a payment, said Dave Roland, director of litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri and Varney’s attorney. Roland uses money received for court costs in cases he wins for the center to finance new litigation to enforce the Sunshine Law.

“They have sent a proposal that said, well, we might be willing to pay you part of this, but it’s going to be subject to approval by the auditor’s office,” Roland said in an interview with The Independent. “And I responded, you’re under court order, and the auditor’s office is neither a party to the case, nor are they part of the judiciary, so they don’t have anything to say about that.”

Greg Dohrman, attorney for the city, did not return a call seeking comment.

The city has complied with Beger’s directive to place a tax increase of 30 cents per $100 assessed value on the Nov. 5 ballot. If approved, it would generate about $5,500 a year and last for four years.

The court cannot order the tax to be imposed, only that it be placed on the ballot, Beger noted in his ruling.

Interest on the judgment is accruing at 9% per year and the amount the city now owes is about $85,000, Roland said. If the city refuses to pay, he said, he will have to take them back to court.

“I told them in no uncertain terms, if you defy a court order, then we’re going to pursue the remedies provided that allows the city officials responsible to be charged with contempt,” Roland said.

The Missouri Supreme Court takes the bench on Sept. 10, 2024, in Jefferson City to hear a case questioning whether an amendment to overturn the state's abortion ban will remain on the state's November ballot. From left are Judges Kelly C. Broniec, Robin Ransom, W. Brent Powell, Chief Justice Mary R. Russell, Zel. M. Fischer, Paul C. Wilson and Ginger K. Gooch (Pool photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Missourians will have the opportunity to vote to enshrine abortion in the state constitution this November, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a decision published less than three hours before the constitutional deadline to remove a question from the ballot, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that recommended the measure be stripped from the Nov. 5 ballot.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft “shall certify to local election authorities that Amendment 3 be placed on the Nov. 5, 2024, general election ballot and shall take all steps necessary to ensure that it is on said ballot,” the judgment read.

The court has not yet issued an opinion.

“This fight was not just about this amendment—it was about defending the integrity of the initiative petition process and ensuring that Missourians can shape their future directly,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, said in a statement.

In a lawsuit filed late last month, a number of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists sued Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft for certifying Amendment 3 for the ballot.

The suit was brought forward by state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest who in a statement Tuesday said the Supreme Court “turned a blind eye” in its ruling.

“The fight continues against the vile forces who have no regard for innocent life,” they wrote.

On the eve of the Supreme Court hearing, Ashcroft announced he was decertifying the measure, a potentially unprecedented attempt to rescind his previous decision in an attempt to block the measure from the ballot.

The Supreme Court judges said Ashcroft missed his statutory deadline to change his mind.

“Respondent Ashcroft certified the petition as sufficient prior to that deadline, and any action taken to change that decision weeks after the statutory deadline expired is a nullity and of no effect,” the judges wrote.

Amendment 3 — which had been stripped from the Secretary of State’s website on Monday — was again listed under 2024 ballot measures as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Judge calls Ashcroft’s characterization of abortion amendment ‘unfair’ and ‘misleading’

In order to get a citizen-led Amendment on the ballot, the campaign behind the measure must first collect enough signatures from six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. When asked for signatures, state law requires that the amendment be attached in full.

The initiative petition circulated by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom did not include any current law that would be repealed, the issue at the crux of the lower court’s ruling.

There is also a section of state law that requires initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”

Attorneys for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have said the amendment would not repeal the state’s current abortion law or take it off the books. Instead, they said, it would create a new law that would supersede much of the existing one because not every element of the current law would be rendered moot, including laws protecting women who get abortions from prosecution.

And, they added, anything that falls under the scope of the amendment would be left to the judicial system to interpret.

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh did not agree. On Friday he ruled that the campaign did not meet the sufficiency requirement through a “failure to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent.”

While Limbaugh recommended the amendment be taken off the ballot, he ultimately left the decision up to a higher court.

Four days later, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom.

“What this decision really says today is that we deserve to be on the ballot,” said Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, which is part of the coalition behind the amendment. ”That people deserve to make this decision for themselves.”

If passed on Nov. 5, the amendment would go into effect 30 days later. At that point, Schafer said there will likely be a series of legal challenges to clarify what the amendment means.

“But it’s very clear that when the amendment goes into effect, our state’s total abortion ban is over,” Schafer said.

The amendment reads in part: “The government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care.”

Abortion is illegal in Missouri with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. If the amendment passes by a simple majority, it would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, including birth control.

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “failure to protect voters.”

“We implore Missourians to research and study the text and effects of Amendment 3 before going to the voting booth,” she said in a statement.

Forck, one of the plaintiffs, was among a handful of anti-abortion activists who remained outside the Supreme Court building once a decision came down.

“We are resolved firmly to let the people of Missouri know exactly how insidious this Amendment 3 is,” she said, later adding: “This is a very slippery slope.”

The Missouri Republican Party called the ruling “devastating.”

“This ruling marks the most dangerous threat to Missouri’s pro-life laws in our state’s history,” the party said in a statement Tuesday. “Make no mistake—this amendment, bankrolled by radical out-of-state interest groups, is a direct assault on Missouri families and the values we hold dear.”

So far, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom has raised more than $15 million for the campaign, including seven-figure donations from national groups whose funders are not listed, including the Fairness Project.

With the general election only eight weeks away, Democratic candidates drew on news of the Supreme Court decision to call on supporters.

“Voters will overturn Missouri’s cruel ban that has zero exceptions for rape and incest,” Crystal Quade, the Democratic nominee for governor, said in a statement. “And they deserve a governor who will protect the will of voters and the rights of every Missourian.”

Lucas Kunce, the Democrat running against incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, took an opportunity to call out Hawley’s opposition to Amendment 3.

“The lies and lawfare,” Kunce said, “used by Josh Hawley and his allies to try to block a citizen-led effort to end their total abortion ban have failed.”

This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. to include reaction to the ruling.

(Getty Images).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge rejected an attempt to invalidate an initiative petition on sports betting Friday, allowing voters to decide whether to enshrine sports wagering in Missouri’s Constitution on the November ballot.

“Lawsuits seeking to remove an initiative petition from the ballot after it has been certified as sufficient by the secretary (of state) are highly disfavored,” Judge Daniel Green wrote in his ruling, quoting from another case that he must rule with “restraint, trepidation and a healthy suspicion of the partisan that would use the judiciary to prevent the initiative process from taking its course.”

Green reviewed lists of petition signatures plaintiffs submitted to allege that the amendment did not meet the minimum threshold in Missouri’s 1st congressional district. The evidence included 95 signatures that plaintiffs called “disqualified voters.”

Green, in his ruling, said the evidence did not show that the voters were ineligible when they signed the petition. Without these 95 signatures thrown out, the petition meets minimum qualifications.

Beyond that, plaintiffs’ argument failed to convince Green that the Missouri Secretary of State incorrectly certified the signatures.

In an argument led by Marc Ellinger — a seasoned Jefferson City attorney with experience representing Missouri gaming companies — plaintiffs took issue with the method the secretary used when calculating the number of votes needed in each district.

But, Green wrote, this calculation has been constant throughout all initiatives in 2022 and 2024 and was used by previous secretaries of state.  The number was determined by multiplying the number of votes cast for governor in 2020 by 8%.

Ellinger said the number should be based on congressional district maps drawn after the 2020 election, but he “presented no evidence from which the court could determine what plaintiff’s target number should be,” Green wrote.

Should the threshold stand, Ellinger argued that there were a plethora of signatures that were improperly certified. For this, his expert witness was Kevin Oglesby, who manages National Political Consultants Inc and was hired to look at the signatures.

Oglesby received information from the secretary of state’s office to assess signatures, and his testimony was a large part of Thursday’s trial as he explained instances he deemed errors.

Local election authorities, which processed the petition for the secretary of state, had more information when reviewing signatures.

Green noted that plaintiffs “did not present evidence to qualify (Oglesby) as a handwriting expert.”

“Court did not find the testimony of the plaintiff’s witness to be credible or particularly helpful,” Green said in his judgment.

His ruling also dismissed a counter-claim by intervenors Winning for Missouri Education, the initiative’s campaign committee. The claim alleged that the committee, which has raised over $6.5 million to support the petition, is harmed by plaintiffs’ accusations

Green said there was no evidence presented on the matter, rendering it “moot.”

Winning for Missouri Education spokesman Jack Cardetti celebrated the victory Friday, focusing on the increased tax dollars that could go to public education if the initiative is approved.

“Today’s ruling, while expected, is nevertheless a big victory for Missourians, who overwhelmingly want to join the 38 other states that allow sports betting, so that we can provide tens of millions in permanent, dedicated funding each year to our public school,” he said. “For too many years, Missourians have watched as fans cross state lines to place sport bets, which deprives our Missouri public schools of much needed funding.”

Ellinger did not respond to a timely request for comment.

A case in the Cole County Circuit Court may decide whether sports betting will be on the November ballot (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge must soon decide whether Missouri voters will be able to  enshrine sports betting in the state’s constitution.

A lawsuit brought by two political strategists questions the validity of the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State’s Office. The proposal was certified for the November ballot after being deemed to have collected enough signatures in all but two congressional districts.

But over the course of a nearly seven-hour hearing on Thursday, both sides picked through individual voter records in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District after a petition management firm hired by the plaintiffs said it had found around 750 signatures that should have been deemed invalid — enough to drag the petition below the threshold needed to be placed on the ballot.

Attorneys representing the secretary of state and the sports betting campaign, Winning for Missouri Education, prodded at the petition management firm’s techniques.

Kevin Oglesby, a manager for National Political Consultants Inc — whose company has been investigated for misrepresenting initiative petitions they were hired to canvas for in Michigan in 2020 and 2022 — said he was granted access to petition signatures and voter registration cards through the secretary of state’s office.

With these documents, he testified that he checked through thousands of signatures and compiled a list of those he believes local election officials incorrectly counted as valid.

Marc Ellinger, a veteran Jefferson City attorney representing the plaintiffs, led Oglesby through stacks of signatures by pointing out names and asking what was wrong with the record.

Some, Oglesby said, had signatures that did not match the signature on the voter registration card. Others had different names than noted on the card. One example was someone who had been convicted of a felony and was therefore ineligible to vote.

Ellinger — who touts a focus on gaming law in his biography, including representing the Missouri Gaming Commission — handed out 12 binder-clipped stacks of names Oglesby said were “illegal.”

Assistant Attorney General Eric Kinnaw, who represented the secretary of state’s office, asked Oglesby if he knew whether those who had been deemed ineligible because of death or felony convictions could have been a qualified voter on the date they signed.

He didn’t know.

Chuck Hatfield, representing the sports betting campaign, led Oglesby back through some of the names. Some of them had not been counted in the secretary of state’s certification, he said.

Those with mismatched names were often women, he noted, pointing to a regulation that allows for those who have changed their names to be counted.

Scott Clark, deputy chief of staff for the secretary of state, testified  that there is a process local election authorities are trained on for those with mismatched names.

Petition processors have two software systems available to validate signatures, he said, one of which shows the voter’s history. This allows them to see previous names as well as their full history of signatures sent to the county clerk.

Oglesby had one reference signature per voter to cross-check with the petition. Local authorities can check as many as the county has logged, Clark said.

Tim Morgan, a forensic document examiner, testified that the best practice when verifying a questionable signature is to have “five, 10 to 20” recent signatures.

Ellinger said that would make the secretary of state’s process unscientific with only a historic record.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green, who is presiding over the case, asked if attorneys expected the court to review the documents to determine “whether the signatures match each other or not.”

Ellinger said he should if he’s “not willing to accept the witness’s testimony (as fact).”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Green said.

Attorneys for Winning for Missouri Education submitted a packet of 652 signatures and voter registration cards as evidence. These, they argued, were additional signatures that should be verified.

Hatfield said in his opening statement that some names were excluded from the Secretary of State’s count. The certification of the initiative petition signatures notes that “districts which significantly exceeded the requirements for sufficiency may have additional unchecked signatures.”

Ellinger submitted 350 records in rebuttal, saying over half of those signatures brought by Hatfield were invalid.

The parties must file their proposed judgments Friday afternoon. Green could issue his verdict in the case anytime after. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump appears ahead of the start of jury selection at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 15, 2024 in New York City (Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Exactly two months out from the presidential election, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan plans to move ahead with the case accusing former President Donald Trump of subverting the 2020 presidential election results, telling Trump’s attorneys that she is “not concerned with the electoral schedule.”

Chutkan released a timeline for the case late Thursday afternoon setting several deadlines for evidence, briefs and replies for the weeks prior to November’s election, and ultimately stretching beyond Election Day.

While it had been evident for some time that the Republican presidential nominee likely would not face a trial before Nov. 5 on election interference charges, Chutkan’s calendar made it certain.

Trump did not appear in federal court for Thursday morning’s hearing in Washington, D.C., but his lawyers pleaded not guilty on his behalf to the four charges that remained unchanged in U.S. special counsel Jack Smith’s new indictment, filed last week.

The case had been in a holding pattern for eight months as Trump appealed his claim of presidential immunity all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. prosecutors say they are ready to restart the case in the coming weeks, while Trump’s team has argued for more time to review evidence and dismiss the superseding indictment.

The Supreme Court returned Trump’s case to the trial court after ruling that former presidents are immune from criminal charges for official “core constitutional” acts while in office and hold at least presumptive immunity for “outer perimeter” activities, but not for personal actions.

This gave Chutkan, an Obama administration appointee, the major task of parsing Smith’s indictment, deciding which allegations against Trump fall under the umbrella of official acts and which relate to actions taken in a personal capacity.

Chutkan set the following deadlines on the pre-trial calendar:

• The government must complete all mandatory evidentiary disclosures by Sept. 10, with other disclosures ongoing afterward.
• Trump’s reply briefs to certain evidence matters are due Sept. 19.
• The government’s opening brief on presidential immunity is due Sept. 26, and the Trump legal team’s reply is due on Oct. 17. The government’s opposition is thereafter due on Oct. 29.
• Trump is also scheduled to provide a supplement to his original motion to dismiss based on statutory grounds by Oct. 3, and the government must reply by Oct. 17.
• Trump’s request to file a motion based on his argument that Smith was illegally appointed to his special prosecutor position is due on Oct. 24, with the government’s reply due on Oct. 31. The due date for Trump’s opposition to the government’s reply is Nov. 7, stretching the pre-trial calendar beyond the presidential election.

Chutkan skeptical 

Chutkan did not issue any decisions on immunity at the Thursday hearing but rather spent significant time grilling Trump’s attorney John Lauro on why he believes it is “unseemly” for Smith’s office to lay out its case this month in an opening brief. Thomas Windom, a federal prosecutor in Smith’s office, said the government would be ready to file the brief by the end of September.

Lauro argued that Smith wanting to file “at breakneck speed” is “incredibly unfair that they are able to put in the public record (evidence) at this sensitive time in our nation’s history.”

“I understand there’s an election impending,” Chutkan snapped back, reminding him that it “is not relevant here.”

“Three weeks is not exactly breakneck speed,” Chutkan added.

Lauro argues that Chutkan should examine parts of the indictment that accuse Trump of pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to accept false slates of electors leading up to Pence’s ceremonial role in certifying the election results on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The problem with that issue is if in fact the communications are immune, then the entire indictment fails,” Lauro argued.

“I’m not sure that’s my reading of the case,” Chutkan replied.

The government maintains that all actions and communications by Trump described in the new indictment were “private in nature,” Windom argued.

Chutkan also spent time during the roughly 75-minute hearing questioning Lauro on the Trump legal team’s numerous plans to request the case’s dismissal. One anticipated plan is to try its successful play in Florida, where a Trump-appointed federal judge tossed his classified documents case after Trump argued Smith was illegally appointed as special counsel.

Chutkan said she will allow the defense to file that motion but warned that attorneys must provide convincing arguments on why “binding precedent doesn’t hold” for the time-tested position of special prosecutor.

New indictment, same charges

Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights for his alleged role in conspiring to create false electors from seven states and spreading knowingly false information that whipped his supporters into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A federal grand jury handed up a revised indictment Aug. 27 in an effort to tailor the charges to the Supreme Court’s July 1 immunity ruling. The fresh indictment omitted any references to Trump’s alleged pressure campaign on Justice Department officials to meddle in state election results.

But the document added emphasis on Trump’s personal use of social media outside of his actions as president, and said he and several co-conspirators schemed outside of his official duties. The new indictment also stressed Trump’s pressure on Pence to accept the fake electors in his role outside of the executive branch as president of the Senate.

If Trump wins the Oval Office in November, he would have the power to hinder or altogether shut down the Department of Justice’s election interference case against him.

If he loses to Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, the case is sure to be set back by further delays, as the Trump team plans numerous challenges and will almost certainly appeal — likely to the Supreme Court again — Chutkan’s decisions on which allegations against Trump are or are not subject to immunity.

According to Friday’s joint filing in which each side laid out plans for the case going forward, Trump’s team also warned they will challenge that Trump’s tweets and communication about the 2020 presidential results should be considered all official acts.

Additionally, Trump plans to file a motion to dismiss the case based on the Supreme Court’s June ruling that a Jan. 6 rioter could not be charged with obstructing an official proceeding — a charge that Trump also faces.

Dave Wasinger (photo submitted)

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor has dropped a defamation lawsuit he filed before the Aug. 6 primary against the corporate owner of Missouri television stations and one of his political rivals. 

David Wasinger filed the lawsuit on Aug. 2 claiming that a television ad run by another Republican vying for the lieutenant governor nomination — state Sen. Lincoln Hough — was false and misleading because it claimed he was an “abortion-loving Democrat.”

The suit was filed against the political action committee that supported Hough and paid for the ad, called Lincoln PAC, and Hearst television stations, which ran the ad.

He asked a St. Louis judge to pull the ad off the air and award him at least $25,000 in damages. 

The judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order, and the ads continued airing through the primary election. 

“Simply put, this ad is so riddled with errors and Lincoln PAC does not even attempt to substantiate many of the falsehoods,” the lawsuit alleged. 

Wasinger edged out Hough for the nomination, winning by just one percentage point. 

On Tuesday, he agreed to dismiss the case. 

The lieutenant governor is next in line for governor, sits on various boards and breaks ties in the state Senate. In Missouri, unlike many other states, the lieutenant governor doesn’t run on a ticket with the governor. 

Wasinger is an attorney at a St. Louis law firm he owns and manages, and a certified public accountant. He was the main funder of his own campaign, loaning himself $2.6 million.

He will now face Democrat Richard Brown, a state legislator from Kansas City, and Libertarian Ken Iverson of St. Louis in November.

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images).

A proposal to allow a new casino to be licensed on the Osage River near the Lake of the Ozarks will be on the November ballot, a Cole County judge ruled Friday.

The initiative, which was initially found to be 2,031 signatures short in the 2nd Congressional District, actually did have enough valid signatures, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office conceded when a planned trial over the petition opened before Judge Daniel Green.

The proposed constitutional amendment initially failed to qualify for the ballot because of signatures disallowed by local election officials. An additional 2,230 valid signatures were found by the proponents, Osage River Gaming and Convention, by reviewing the rejections.

Signature verification is “a massive, messy process that does not always produce perfect results,” Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing the campaign, told Green.

The proposal will be Amendment 5 on the Nov. 5 ballot and joins three other initiative proposals — protecting reproductive rights, listed as Amendment 3; increasing the minimum wage, listed as Proposition A; and legalizing sports betting, listed as Amendment 2.

There are pending court challenges to the reproductive rights and sports wagering proposals that could strike them from the ballot.

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area.

“Today is a victory for the initiative petition process and for voters who will benefit from our proposed development at the Lake of the Ozarks,” the committee said in a statement issued after Green ruled. 

The proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to allow a casino along the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and the confluence with the Missouri River. The constitution currently authorizes casinos only along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

The proposal would also override a state law limiting the state to 13 licensed casinos, passed in 2008 as a result of an initiative sponsored by casino operators.

The Lake of the Ozarks is one of Missouri’s busiest tourism destinations. The casino proposal is being bankrolled by Bally’s, which currently operates a casino in Kansas City, and RIS Inc., a major regional developer. 

Each has contributed about half of the $4.3 million raised for the petition drive.

The casino will support more than 700 new jobs in the lake area. The project, if approved, would generate admission and other fee revenue of $2.1 million annually, according to the language appearing on the ballot, and annual gaming tax revenue of $14.3 million.

There are also two constitutional amendments proposed by the General Assembly on the ballot.  Amendment 6 would give the courts power to enforce payment of fees that support retirement benefits for sheriffs and prosecutors. Amendment 7 would ban the use of ranked-choice voting in Missouri elections and restate the current ban on voting by people who are not U.S. citizens.

Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, talks with Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on an episode of Brietbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot at Quicken Loans Arena on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio (Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM).

Special Counsel Jack Smith is looking to reopen a case against former President Donald Trump, filing arguments on Monday, Aug. 26, with a federal appeals court of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to dismiss it. Cannon, a Trump appointee, was nominated in 2020 and confirmed by the Senate (Drew Angerer/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal appeals court to reverse the dismissal of a case alleging former President Donald Trump mishandled classified documents at his Florida home after he left the Oval Office.

The appeals process could take months, likely closing the door on any movement in the classified documents case against Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, before November’s election.

Smith argued late Monday that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to toss the case was based on a “flawed” argument that Smith was illegally appointed to the office of special counsel.

Over an 81-page brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Smith cited statutes and a Watergate-era Supreme Court decision to argue the time-tested legality of U.S. attorneys general to appoint and fund independent, or special, counsels.

“In ruling otherwise, the district court deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent, misconstrued the statutes that authorized the Special Counsel’s appointment, and took inadequate account of the longstanding history of Attorney General appointments of special counsels,” Smith wrote.

Further, he warned, “[t]he district court’s rationale could jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department and call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch.”

Cannon, a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida, dismissed the classified documents case against Trump on July 15 — two days after Trump was injured in an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania and just as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Wisconsin.

Cannon is a Trump appointee who was nominated in 2020 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate later that year.

Trump had argued for the case’s dismissal in February.

Days before he was set to officially accept the party’s nomination for president, Trump hailed Cannon’s dismissal as a way to unite the nation following the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Cannon argued Smith’s appointment violated two clauses of the U.S. Constitution that govern how presidential administrations and Congress appoint and approve “Officers of the United States,” and how taxpayer money can be used to pay their salaries and other expenses.

Smith appealed her decision just days later.

Historic classified documents case

Smith’s historic case against Trump marked the first time a former U.S. president faced federal criminal charges.

A grand jury handed up a 37-count indictment in June 2023 charging the former president, along with his aide Walt Nauta, with felonies related to mishandling classified documents after Trump’s term in office, including storing them at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate. A superseding indictment that added charges and another co-defendant was handed up a little over a month later.

The classified documents case is just one of several legal entanglements for Trump, who became a convicted felon in New York state court in May.

The former president also continues to face federal criminal charges for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. That case has also been in a holding pattern for several months as Trump appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the charges should be dropped based on presidential criminal immunity.

The Supreme Court ruled in early July that the former presidents enjoy immunity for official “core Constitutional” acts and returned the case to the federal trial court in Washington, D.C.

Smith has until the end of August to assess how the immunity decision affects the election subversion case against Trump. A pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Sept. 5.

Missouri is being sued over a new law requiring drugmakers to deliver prescriptions discounted under the 340B program to any pharmacy contracting with a qualified provider. (Mint Images/Getty Images)

Three major pharmaceutical companies and their national lobbying organization are suing Missouri to block enforcement of a new state law requiring them to give medical providers unlimited access to discounted drugs for their pharmacies.

In four federal lawsuits filed over the past month, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Abbvie and PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, argue that Missouri lawmakers unconstitutionally intruded into interstate commerce with the bill passed this year.

Under the bill, drugmakers must accept orders to deliver medications to providers eligible for discounts under the 340B program, named for the section of law where it is authorized. The bill allows eligible providers to have an unlimited number of contracts with pharmacies to dispense their prescriptions of drugs purchased under the program.

“Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, Missouri has no authority to define who has access to 340B-priced drugs,” states the lawsuit filed last week by PhRMA in the Western District of Missouri.

The law takes effect on Wednesday. The plaintiffs in each case have asked for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement, but no hearings on the requests have been scheduled and only one case, filed Aug. 2 by Novartis, has had enough activity for the judge to schedule any proceedings.

Abbvie went first, filing its lawsuit July 22 in the Eastern District  — 10 days after Gov. Mike Parson declined to sign the bill and instead allowed it to become law despite his misgivings. The other three cases are filed with the Western District, which includes Jefferson City.

The lawsuits name Attorney General Andrew Bailey and members of the state Board of Pharmacy, which is responsible for enforcing the law. The board is given authority to investigate violations of the law and the attorney general has enforcement powers through the state Merchandising Practices Act.

“It is difficult to convincingly argue that doing what a federal program requires is an irreparable harm,” Maria Lanahan, deputy solicitor general in the attorney general’s office, wrote in a filing arguing against a preliminary injunction in the Novartis lawsuit. “To the contrary, when Novartis complies with S.B. 751, it is helping covered entities that serve vulnerable populations.”

Bailey’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment on the cases.

The board is relying on Bailey to respond to the lawsuit. The law is self-enforcing and while the board could write rules about how it is to be followed, Executive Director Kimberly Grinston said.

“The board does not have a timeline to promulgate rules and has not made a decision on whether rules would be promulgated,” she said.

The Missouri Hospital Association and the Missouri Primary Care Association have asked to intervene in the Novartis lawsuit and will likely seek to join the other three, hospital association spokesman Dave Dillon said Monday.

“We are evaluating each case and intend to reinforce the work done by the General Assembly on behalf of Missouri’s hospitals, other providers and the communities they serve,” Dillon said.

The 340B program was created in 1992. It had two components — drug manufacturers had to deliver their products at a discount to eligible providers and eligible providers could only use the program to provide prescriptions to patients they treated directly.

Eligible providers included children’s hospitals, as well as hospitals that were sole providers in their community or designated “critical access hospitals” by providing care that would otherwise be absent, and those serving large numbers of indigent patients known as “disproportionate share hospitals.”

Other qualifying providers include federally qualified health care centers — clinics that receive grants to support operations so they can base charges on ability to pay — as well as clinics that serve AIDS patients, black lung victims and other debilitating diseases.

The use of contract pharmacies started in 1996, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began allowing one contractor per provider as recognition that many providers did not have in-house pharmacies. But a change to allow unlimited contracting increased the number of contract pharmacies from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024, according to data from PhRMA provided to The Independent in June.

Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022. Discounts averaged 60% from regular wholesale prices, the lobbying organization stated.

The pharmaceutical companies focus their criticism on the disproportionate share hospitals, who often contract with for-profit pharmacies to dispense the drugs. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

Pharmaceutical companies complain that the discounts are rarely passed on to patients. Instead, insurance companies and consumers pay retail prices and the extra profit is often split between the pharmacy and the provider.

“Make no mistake, the boom in contract pharmacies has been fueled by the prospect of outsized profit margins on 340B-discounted drugs,” AstraZeneca’s lawyers wrote in the complaint filed last week. “In short, the widespread proliferation of contract pharmacy arrangements since 2010 has transformed the 340B program from one intended to assist vulnerable patients into a multi-billion-dollar arbitrage scheme.”

The drugmakers have fought the expansion of contract pharmacies in a variety of ways. When Novartis sought in 2020 to limit the contracts to pharmacies within 40 miles of an eligible provider, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice that it considered the limit a violation of the program’s rules.

An advisory opinion on contracting, later withdrawn, said the 340B program required delivery to a pharmacy on “the lunar surface, low-earth orbit, or a neighborhood…”

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania ruled in January 2023 in a case against the federal agency that pharmaceutical companies could impose limits on the number of pharmacies they would allow to purchase the discounted drugs.

After the 2023 ruling, Novartis tightened its rules to allow only one contracted pharmacy per covered provider, but only if the provider did not have an in-house pharmacy. Other manufacturers have imposed variations on the Novartis policies.

State efforts to counter the limits have ramped up in the past two years. Missouri is one of eight states to pass laws requiring drugmakers to deliver discounted medications to contract pharmacies.

Arkansas was one of the first. In March, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the Arkansas law requiring drugmakers to allow covered providers to have an unlimited number of contract pharmacies.

In the motion to dismiss the Novartis lawsuit, the Missouri attorney general’s office relied heavily on that ruling, writing that it shows federal law does not prevent Missouri from passing a similar law.

The four lawsuits use a variety of legal theories to assail Missouri’s new law. Along with allegations of interfering with interstate commerce and regulating in an area reserved for federal action, the Abbvie lawsuit argues that its property rights are being violated.

“These abuses of the federal 340B program raise obvious concerns because the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from forcing the transfer of property at confiscatory prices to private parties for their own private benefit,” the lawsuit states.

In the filing seeking to intervene in the Novartis case, the hospitals and primary care associations argued that the revenue from profits on 340B medications are essential support for their operations.

“Reducing access to those savings,” the filing states, “means hospitals are unable to underwrite critical but under-reimbursed services lines.”

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit challenging the Second Amendment Preservation Act, arguing it has undermined federal drug and weapons investigations (Getty Images).

A Missouri law declaring some federal gun regulations “invalid” is unconstitutional because it violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, a federal appeals court in St. Louis unanimously ruled on Monday. 

A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a district court ruling from last year that blocked Missouri from enforcing the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a law passed in 2021 that penalizes police for enforcing certain federal gun laws.

Among the law’s provisions is a $50,000 fine for law enforcement agencies that“infringe” on Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.

Some of the gun regulations deemed invalid by the law include imposing certain taxes on firearms, requiring gun owners to register their weapons and laws prohibiting “law-abiding” residents from possessing or transferring their guns.

“Because the (Second Amendment Preservation) Act purports to invalidate federal law in violation of the Supremacy Clause, we affirm the (district court’s) judgment,” Chief Judge Steven Colloton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in the unanimous opinion. 

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit challenging the law arguing it has undermined federal drug and weapons investigations. Late last year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Attorney General Andrew Bailey to allow Missouri to enforce the Second Amendment Preservation Act while its appeal is ongoing.

In a statement through his spokeswoman, Bailey said he is reviewing the decision. He added: “I will always fight for Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.”

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas released a statement Monday afternoon praising the court’s decision. 

“Two years ago, Missouri enacted an unconstitutional law, claiming to invalidate federal gun laws,” Lucas wrote. “The law was rejected in federal appeals court today… I am saddened that our state expended the time and energy of many in our legal system in service of this clearly unconstitutional effort.”

Students hold up anti-abortion signs at the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A pair of Republican state legislators and an anti-abortion activist filed a lawsuit Thursday asking a judge to block an abortion-rights constitutional amendment from appearing on the Nov. 5 ballot. 

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly and Kathy Forck sued last year challenging the cost estimate for a proposed constitutional amendment rolling back Missouri’s ban on abortion. 

The campaign behind the proposal ultimately turned in enough signatures to earn a spot on the November ballot, where it is set to appear as Amendment 3. 

Missouri voters will decide whether to legalize abortion in November 

On Thursday, Coleman, Kelly, Forck and Marguerite Forrest, the operator of a shelter for homeless pregnant women in St. Louis County, filed a new lawsuit in Cole Circuit Court arguing that the decision to place the amendment on the ballot should be reversed.

The amendment violates the Missouri Constitution, the lawsuit argues, because it illegally includes more than one subject. It also fails to specify the laws and constitutional provisions that would be repealed if it were approved by voters, the lawsuit argues. 

In a joint statement released to the media, the plaintiffs said Amendment 3 is a “direct threat to the lives of Missouri women by erasing the will of voters who chose to protect the safety of women and the child by electing strong pro-life leaders.”

Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, which is supporting Amendment 3, called Thursday’s lawsuit “yet another baseless and desperate attempt from politicians to silence Missouri voters and prevent them from being heard. We will not let that happen.”

Sweet said she is confident the courts will “see through this thinly veiled effort to block Missouri voters and dismiss it swiftly.”

Missouri was the first state to ban abortion after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the constitutional right to the procedure. Since then, abortion has been virtually illegal, with limited exceptions only in cases of medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.

If approved by voters, Amendment 3 would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability, an undefined period of time generally seen as the point in which the fetus could survive outside the womb on its own, generally around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

Such an amendment would return Missouri to the standard of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which also legalized abortion up to the point of fetal viability. Missouri’s amendment also includes exceptions after viability “to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

Missouri’s amendment also states that women and those performing or assisting in abortions cannot be prosecuted. Under current Missouri law, doctors who perform abortions deemed unnecessary can be charged with a class B felony and face up to 15 years in prison. Their medical license can also be suspended or revoked.

The lawsuit filed Thursday argues that Amendment 3 illegally includes more than one subject, in part because of its use of the phrase “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” 

The lawsuit argues this phrase is “unlimited in scope” and is “systematically neutralizing all laws, existing or future, that attempt to limit this new, limitless ‘right to reproductive freedom.’” It lays out numerous restrictions on abortion and other laws that could be repealed by Amendment 3 if it were approved by voters, including restrictions on when abortions can be performed and bans on certain stem cell research. 

This story was updated at 2:35 p.m. with a comment from Missourians for Constitutional Freedom and at 3:11 p.m. to correct the spelling of Kathy Forck’s name. 

The Cole County Courthouse in downtown Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A pair of administrative law judges are suing the Parson administration claiming wrongful termination and illegal withholding of salary. 

Ryan Asbridge, who has served as an administrative law judge since 2019, and Gina Mitten, who has served since 2021, filed a lawsuit last week in Cole Circuit Court. 

They allege the administration of Gov. Mike Parson declared them at-will employees without any authority to do so, thus allowing Mitten to be dismissed and Asbridge’s pay to be withheld while he was on active military duty.

Administrative law judges are appointed by the governor and handle cases involving things such as worker’s compensation. They receive a roughly $120,000 salary. 

In May, Mitten says she was contacted by Parson’s director of the division of worker’s compensation dismissing her from her position. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that state law is clear that administrative law judges can only be discharged or removed after receiving three or more votes of no confidence two years in a row from a five-member review committee that audits their performance. 

Administrative law judges are also subject to retention votes every 12 years by the review committee. 

Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to change this process over the years, and the lawsuit notes that during legislative hearings the Parson administration admitted that there is no other process for removing administrative law judges other than the review committee. 

Judges can also be removed if the legislature doesn’t allocate enough money to cover all salaries. But the lawsuit says the Department of Labor budget has funding for 28 administrative law judges, including Mitten and Asbridge. 

Asbridge is still listed as an administrative law judge, though the lawsuit says he has been on a military leave of absence for the last three years. A major in the United States Air Force Reserves, Asbridge’s deployment on active duty began in November 2021 and had previously been extended through at least August. 

He continued to receive his salary from the state while deployed with the Air Force. According to the lawsuit, Missouri law requires the state to pay salaries of administrative law judges regardless of the hours they work. There is no provision in state law, the lawsuit says, that authorizes the department to withhold Asbridge’s salary. 

Asbridge’s three years of military leave was “an expense beyond what the citizen of Missouri should be responsible for supporting,” the workers compensation division director wrote in a letter included with the lawsuit. 

Mitten is asking to be reinstated and provided back pay, and Asbridge is asking for back pay withheld since June. 

Spokesmen for the governor and the office of administration, which handles payroll for the state, did not respond to a request for comment. In addition to Parson and Office of Administration Commissioner Ken Zellers, named defendants in the lawsuit include Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the director of the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Anna Hui.

The Cole County Courthouse in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

A lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks to block a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing sports wagering in Missouri from being placed on the November ballot. 

The suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, argues the methodology used by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office to certify that the sports betting proposal collected enough signatures was unconstitutional. 

To make the ballot, proposed initiative petitions must receive signatures from 8% of legal voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Lawmakers redrew those districts following the 2020 U.S. Census, but the secretary of state’s office did not use the new districts when it calculated whether enough valid signatures were collected, the lawsuit said. But it used the current district lines to determine where people who signed the petition lived. 

Had the count been based on current district lines, the lawsuit contends, the proposal would have fallen short in the 1st Congressional District. 

The secretary of state should have calculated the required number of signatures per district, the lawsuit asserts, by taking the total vote in the 2020 gubernatorial election, multiplied that by 8%, and divided that total by eight.

Under that scenario, the proposal would have fallen short in both the 1st and 5th Districts. 

The lawsuit also alleges the secretary of state’s office deemed some signatures as valid that were not legal in the 1st and 5th Districts. 

A spokesman for the secretary of state’s office could not be immediately reached for comment. 

The sports wagering initiative was launched late last year after major sports teams and casino companies were frustrated again in passing legislation. The public-facing part of the campaign has been taken by the major pro sports teams, but the money — $6.3 million for the signature campaign — has been provided by the two largest online sports wagering platforms, FanDuel and DraftKings.

Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals, called Wednesday’s lawsuit “completely without merit as Missourians came out in force to sign the petition that will be on the ballot in November.”

If approved by voters this fall, the money won by the gaming industry would be taxed at 10% of the net after promotions and other costs. In Kansas, which legalized sports wagering in 2022, a similar taxing structure brought in $9.8 million for $172 million wagered during June.

The ballot language anticipates Missouri revenue would be up to $28.9 million annually that would be spent on education programs.

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the 2023 veto session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s arguments to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him earlier this year don’t withstand scrutiny and are an effort to “mislead this court,” attorneys for Chief Clerk Dana Miller wrote in a motion filed this week. 

Miller’s lawsuit, filed in May, accuses Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of retaliating against her after she raised concerns about his alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Plocher sought to get himself dismissed from the case last month, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either house.” 

Miller’s attorney, Sylvia Hernandez, wrote in opposing Plocher’s motion that alleged actions taken by the speaker fit the definition of retaliation. 

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

He allegedly moved to change hiring and discipline policies for the House in order to sideline Miller, all of which “can be seen as a reprimand, a reassignment of duties, withholding of work, and as a possible demotion,” Hernandez wrote. 

Plocher also targeted other nonpartisan staff for dismissal, Hernandez wrote, in retaliation against the clerk and circulated a memo containing allegations against Miller aimed at convincing the House to remove her. 

All of this came, Hernandez wrote, after Miller disclosed violations of House policy, “gross waste of funds or abuse of authority, waste of public resources, mismanagement, and danger to public safety.”

By justifying his behavior as simply “political disagreements,” Hernandez wrote, Plocher is trying to “mislead this court” by applying the constitution protections for speech during House debate to conversations that took place behind closed doors. 

Plocher, who last week finished fourth in the GOP primary for secretary of state, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House.

Plocher also fired his first chief of staff, Miller says in her lawsuit, because he “didn’t stop Danagate,” and allegedly sent Jetton to tell her to “back off” if she wanted him to “let it go.”

Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, talks with Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on an episode of Brietbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot at Quicken Loans Arena on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio (Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM).

The dismissal of its bankruptcy case in Florida is not stopping the Gateway Pundit from seeking a continued delay in the defamation case against it by two Georgia poll workers. But the case may be moving ahead soon regardless.

In a motion filed Aug.  5 in the St. Louis Circuit Court, lawyers for the Gateway Pundit and for its owner, James Hoft, and his twin brother, Joe, said the stay in the defamation case that was issued when they filed for bankruptcy last April should remain in place because they plan to appeal the dismissal of the bankruptcy petition.

Restarting the defamation case in St. Louis before the resolution of the appeal, the lawyers argued, could result in the case “proceeding through fits and starts, with the bankruptcy stay being in effect, then likely in effect again … prudence and judicial economy would favor a stay by this court.”

The Hofts’ lawyers filed their formal notice in the Florida bankruptcy court of their intention to appeal three days later, on Aug. 8.

But on Aug. 7, Peter Dunne — the court-appointed special master in the St. Louis case — set a new deadline for completion of discovery in the case in light of the dismissal of the bankruptcy and the fact that no appeal had been filed at that time.  The new deadline is Nov. 10, two months later than the one that had been in place before the bankruptcy filing in late April derailed the schedule.

Dunne also noted that the case remains on the docket for jury trial in the week of March 10, 2025.

Missouri lawsuit isn’t the only defamation case against far-right site Gateway Pundit

Now it appears it will be up to the St. Louis Circuit Court whether to accept Dunne’s proposed recommendation. That could be encouraging for the plaintiffs, because the court has to this point shown considerable deference to Dunne’s recommendations.

Lawyers for the two Georgia poll workers — Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss — have argued that the bankruptcy filing itself was a stall tactic in a case where delay has been the strategy from the beginning. The two women sued the Hofts and TGP Communications LLC, which does business as Gateway Pundit, in December 2021. They said Gateway Pundit’s repeated false accusations that they committed ballot fraud led to death threats and other harassment.

In December 2021, the two women also filed a defamation suit against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who made the same accusations against them. But in that case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, it took only two years for a jury verdict to be rendered — awarding the two women compensatory and punitive damages of more than $148 million.

In St. Louis, however, the Hofts have thus far been able to avoid any resolution by seeking a change in venue, resisting discovery orders, counter-suing the attorneys for the plaintiffs and other means. The same strategy has also worked thus far in dragging out a defamation case filed in Denver against Hoft and Donald Trump’s campaign by Eric Coomer, a former executive of Dominion Voting Systems.

That case was filed a year before the one in St. Louis.

In dismissing the Gateway Pundit bankruptcy case, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Mindy A. Mora wrote that the company “remains both balance sheet and cash flow solvent. There is no present financial distress, no looming foreclosure sale, no prospect of a market crash. There is only the State Court Litigation in which TGP must defend itself. That’s not a basis for bankruptcy relief; it’s the justice system in operation. … TGP filed bankruptcy purely as a litigation strategy… The Court will dismiss this bankruptcy case as a bad faith filing.”

This story was originally appeared in the Gateway Journalism Review and is being republished with permission. 

Ballot language for a proposed constitutional amendment banning non-citizen and ranked-choice voting will not be changed, a judge ruled Monday (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The ballot language written by lawmakers for a proposed constitutional amendment stating “only citizens of the United States” can vote and banning ranked-choice voting is fair and should be on the Nov. 5 ballot without changes, a Cole County judge ruled Monday.

The “fair ballot language” summary written by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also correctly conveys the central features of the measure, which will be Amendment 7 on the ballot, Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote in an 11-page decision.

The summary statement for the proposal, Walker wrote, “is not untrue or partial, and it does not use language that is intentionally argumentative or likely to create prejudice for the measure nor does it incorrectly describe SJR78.”

Two voters, one from St. Louis and one from Webster Groves, sued over the language, arguing that it is imprecise in its references to the current legal status of non-citizen voting and omits the fact that it is currently illegal in Missouri for non-citizens to vote. The lawsuit named legislative leaders and Ashcroft as defendants in their official capacity for the 50-word summary written by lawmakers and the language intended to give a full description written by Ashcroft.

While the attorneys defending the language wouldn’t give a definitive answer on whether non-citizens can currently vote during the July 29 trial, Walker noted, “the court doubts whether the defendants or their counsel actually believe that non-citizens are currently allowed to vote.”

Lawmakers voted to put the measure on the ballot when they were unable to pass a more controversial proposal to change how a majority is calculated on constitutional amendments proposed by initiative petition. 

That measure also included the provisions barring non-citizens from voting.

The ban on ranked-choice voting is a reaction to a failed 2022 initiative to institute the process where voters are allowed to designate candidates as their second and third choices for an office, with votes for candidates who have the fewest votes distributed to their other choices in races where no candidate receives a majority.

The language written by lawmakers asks whether the constitution should be amended to:

• Make the Constitution consistent with state law by only allowing citizens of the United States to vote;
• Prohibit the ranking of candidates by limiting voters to a single vote per candidate or issue; and
• Require the plurality winner of a political party primary to be the single candidate at a general election?

The first bullet point “conveys the feature without bias, prejudice, deception or favoritism,” Walker wrote in his ruling. 

The challengers wanted “state statute” substituted for “state law” in the first point because a statute currently requires anyone registering to vote to state whether they are a citizen.

“The court does not believe a reasonable voter will be misled or deceived into what the measure will do or that the word ‘law’ is unfair and insufficient as it is used as synonym for ‘state statute’,” Walker wrote.

Missouri allowed non-citizens to vote from 1865 to 1924, when an amendment proposed by a state Constitutional Convention passed with 53.5% of the vote.

The language describing provisions on how elections should be run is also fair, Walker said. He rejected arguments that it should include a reference to a carve-out allowing St. Louis to continue using “approval voting” in local elections or that voters might think it allows only one candidate per office in the general election.

“The court does not believe,” Walker wrote, “that any voter will be misled into thinking that when casting future ballots if (the proposal) is adopted, that they can only vote for one specific person on the ballot and no others.”

The decision came a day before Ashcroft is required to certify whether four measures proposed by initiative had enough signatures to make the ballot. Three measures, to secure abortion rights, legalize sports wagering and increase the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid personal leave, were certified to appear on the November ballot. A fourth legalizing a new casino fell short. 

This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. to include information about other issues that will appear on the November ballot. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (photo submitted).

Jackson County officials said Monday they are evaluating potential legal challenges to an order by the State Tax Commission they argue was only issued to cover for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The Missouri State Tax Commission last week ordered the county to roll back most of its 2023 property valuations, finding that they had been performed illegally, resulting in huge increases in property values.

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s unprecedented. And it has no evidence to even prove it,” County Counselor Bryan Covinsky said at a press conference in Kansas City about the commission’s order.

Covinsky said the county will work with school districts and other taxing jurisdictions to find the best path forward to overturn the order.

The commission’s order came eight months into a lawsuit against Jackson County filed by Bailey, who accused officials of failing to follow proper procedures when it assessed property values last year. According to Bailey’s lawsuit, the county saw an average 30% jump in property values. Bailey claims the county failed to offer physical inspections to property owners facing a value increase of 15% or more. 

But with only one day of trial left in Bailey’s case against the county, the commission ordered the assessments rolled back and Bailey asked for the case to be dismissed. 

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Both the order and the motion to dismiss came a day before Bailey was expected to sit for a deposition regarding his contact with Sean Smith, a Jackson County official, which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. They also came a day after Bailey won the GOP primary for a full term as attorney general.

The judge in the case granted Bailey’s motion to dismiss on Thursday, ending the possibility that Bailey would be questioned under oath in the case. 

Covinsky and County Executive Frank White Jr., claimed Bailey’s office was losing and knew it. 

“Attorney General Bailey dismissed a case that he himself called the most important in the history of his office,” White said. “Let’s not forget, Attorney General Bailey dismissed the lawsuit the day after his election because he was afraid to answer questions under oath.” 

Assistant Attorney General Jay Atkins said in an email that the goal of Bailey’s lawsuit was to provide relief to Jackson County taxpayers.

“The tax commission’s order does just that,” Atkins said. “(Attorney) General Bailey was proud to stand with the state tax commission as we worked together to hold Jackson County accountable and bring taxpayers the relief they deserve. We look forward to defending the state tax commission’s lawful order.” 

The commission could not immediately be reached for comment. 

In a legal memo to White, Covinsky recommended the county keep operating as they were before the tax commission order “unless and until such time that a court of competent jurisdiction orders otherwise.” He argued “no government entity is required to comply with an unlawful order.” 

Both Bailey and one of his deputies met with Smith while the litigation was ongoing in apparent violation of Missouri Supreme Court rules, which prohibit attorneys from communicating about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another attorney without the consent of the other lawyer. 

Bailey and Smith maintained the meeting was nothing more than a campaign event.

But his deputy, Travis Woods, also spoke with Smith without permission. The judge found Woods in violation of the rules of conduct and Bailey was ordered to sit for the deposition as a form of sanction.

Now, Jackson County and taxing jurisdictions in the county — including school and fire districts and law enforcement — face a budget quandary. 

The State Tax Commission order instructs Jackson County to roll back property assessments that had increased more than 15% since its last assessment.

Rather than provide refunds to homeowners who saw a large increase in property value, officials said, the order will simply redistribute who pays the most. County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty said poorer communities could wind up paying disproportionately high tax bills compared to enormous, stately homes in the city’s Country Club District.

That’s because of a provision of the Missouri Constitution that caps revenue increases for local governments. The Hancock Amendment instructs local governments to adjust their property tax rates to avoid a windfall. When property values rise, the tax rate falls. 

If assessments are rolled back, taxing jurisdictions will raise their rates to provide funds for schools, firefighting and other services, Jackson County officials said. But they face an Oct. 1 deadline to do so, creating a scramble for the county and taxing districts to determine how to move forward.

“If they don’t get it through property values, they’re going to get it through property tax rates. They’re going to adjust it up,” said County Administrator Troy Schulte, “so I don’t see a scenario where taxpayers don’t get hit significantly.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives in 2023. Bailey was granted a motion to dismiss in his lawsuit against Jackson County before he was expected to sit for a scheduled deposition in the case. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a Jackson County official when he was granted a motion to dismiss his lawsuit against the county on Thursday. 

Bailey, who filed suit against the county late last year over its property tax assessment process, was ordered by the judge in the case to sit for a deposition regarding communication with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. 

According to court filings, the deposition was set for Thursday morning. 

But after a series of legal maneuvers to avoid the deposition failed, Bailey asked the judge to dismiss the entire case. In the filing, he said it was no longer necessary because the State Tax Commission issued an order instructing Jackson County to roll back the property assessments.

Jackson County officials cried foul Thursday, arguing in a press release that the tax commission “is being used as a shield for Attorney General Bailey, who is trying to escape accountability after lying and realizing he was losing the case.”

Jackson County noted Bailey less than a month ago called the case “one of the most important pieces of litigation to reach a Missouri courtroom in decades.”

“Yet after only three days of trial, he chose to drop the case entirely,” the county said. “This abrupt reversal exposes the lawsuit for what it truly was: a politically motivated tactic that has cost Missouri taxpayers countless dollars and eroded public trust.”

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said were it not for the commission’s order, the attorney general “would have pushed the lawsuit forward…and we would have won.” 

“Pushing the lawsuit forward could have jeopardized the much needed relief offered in the Tax Commission’s order and would be counterproductive for Jackson County taxpayers,” Sieren said in an email. 

At issue in the case was Jackson County’s 2023 property assessment process, which, according to Bailey’s original lawsuit, resulted in an average 30% increase in values across hundreds of thousands of properties. The higher property values mean some homeowners will see their property tax bill increase.

Bailey’s lawsuit accused the county of violating a law requiring it to offer physical inspections before increasing a property’s value by more than 15%.

The county argued Bailey waited too long to file the lawsuit as property tax bills had been paid and money distributed to government departments. And, the county said, the attorney general couldn’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission had first attempted to resolve the issue. 

Bailey and a deputy then came under scrutiny for meeting with Smith. Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer.

Bailey maintained that his meeting with Smith amounted to nothing more than a campaign meeting with little discussion of the lawsuit. On Tuesday, Bailey won the GOP primary for attorney general. Smith ran unopposed in the Republican primary for 5th District Congressional seat and will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, II in the general election in November. 

Jackson County attorneys sought sanctions against Bailey, and Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser granted them permission to take his deposition.

Bailey’s office tried several times in July to get out of the deposition. Then on Tuesday, Bailey appealed the judge’s decision. A Missouri Court of Appeals judge denied that on Wednesday.

Later on Wednesday, Bailey filed a motion to dismiss the case outright, citing the Missouri State Tax Commission order.

Krauser granted that motion Thursday morning and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Bailey can’t refile it.

Bailey said the State Tax Commission used information his office gathered in the discovery process for the lawsuit.

Jackson County’s press release called officials’ estimate of what rolling back the property assessments would cost “devastating.” The county said schools and libraries would lose $86.3 million in funds they’ve already “received, budgeted and spent.” Cities and fire districts, the county said, would lose almost $20 million. 

“Jackson County firmly believes that fairness will prevail once again,” the county said, “and we will not allow our community to be sacrificed for political gain.”  

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. with reaction from Jackson County officials and a response from Bailey’s office. 

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wants to dismiss his lawsuit against Jackson County a day before he was set to answer questions under oath about a potential ethical breach in the case. 

Bailey, who is suing the county over its property assessment process, on Tuesday asked the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District to overturn a circuit court order in the case allowing Jackson County attorneys to take his deposition. 

The appeal was denied Wednesday morning. 

Hours later, Bailey filed a motion in Jackson County Circuit Court to dismiss the entire case.

In the motion, Bailey says the litigation is no longer needed after the Missouri State Tax Commission issued an order on Wednesday rolling back most property value increases. In a press release, Bailey said the order relied on information obtained through the discovery process in his lawsuits against the county.

“This is a huge win for every property owner in Missouri, but especially in Jackson County,” said Bailey, who on Tuesday won the GOP primary for a full term as attorney general.

Bailey was scheduled to sit for a deposition Thursday to be questioned by Jackson County’s attorneys about his meetings with a county official that they argued violated ethical rules for lawyers. The trial over the property assessment process was expected to resume Friday.

At issue were meetings that both Bailey and a deputy had with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith. Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer.

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Bailey’s office maintained his meeting with Smith amounted to nothing more than a campaign meeting with little discussion of the lawsuit. But Jackson County attorneys filed a motion for sanctions, and Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser gave the county permission to question Bailey as a form of sanction.

“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his office have exhibited a blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct in this case,” the motion filed by Jackson County says, “and their actions are sanctionable. Based on what we know so far, their actions were not innocent mistakes.” 

Bailey’s office tried to persuade Krauser to reconsider, but she declined.

The ethics dispute comes in Bailey’s case accusing Jackson County of failing to comply with the law when it assessed properties in 2023, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw an increase in property value, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties in the county. 

The increase in property value means some owners will have to pay more in property taxes each year.

In defending the case, Jackson County said Bailey had waited too long to file the lawsuit since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argued, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission attempted to first resolve the issue.

The State Tax Commission weighed in Wednesday, saying the county had failed to follow proper procedures, including performing physical inspections, before increasing property values more than 15%.

The commission issued an order claiming “widespread and systemic” failures by Jackson County and ordered officials to roll back the assessments on 75% of properties.  

In a statement, Jackson County called the State Tax Commission’s order “inaccurate and dangerously politicized,” arguing that it was a “desperate, last-minute maneuver” before Bailey’s litigation concludes. 

“This reckless order is harmful to not only taxing jurisdictions, but also taxpayers,” said Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. “While fixing decades of mismanagement hasn’t been easy, we are committed to fairness and will continue working every day to achieve it. Actions like this do immense harm to our communities.”

The Missouri state flag is seen flying outside the Missouri State Capitol Building on Jan. 17, 2021 in Jefferson City (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

The Missouri Housing Development Commission awarded millions of dollars in public funds and tax credits without notice or public votes, a former employee alleged in a lawsuit filed last week.

The lawsuit, filed in Jackson County, claims the commission regularly violated the state’s Sunshine Law and the law governing its actions, which requires an “affirmative vote of at least six of the members.”

The lawsuit was filed by Jesse Mofle, who was employed by the MHDC from March 2021 until October 2023. 

In addition to the Sunshine law claims, the lawsuit alleges that Mofle was also sexually harassed by a coworker. He was fired in retaliation for complaints he made about sexual harassment and complaints he made to the attorney general’s office about Sunshine violations, the lawsuit states.

Rather than hold public meetings where commissioners would vote on which developers were to receive millions in public funds and credits, the lawsuit states, MHDC staff would email commissioners their recommendations, to be implemented unless there were objections.

The lawsuit also claims that the commission has violated the Sunshine law by failing to deliver records Mofle requested in September by the time the lawsuit was filed on July 31. 

The Missouri Housing Development Commission oversees the administration of low-income housing tax credits. There are ten commissioners, including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and state treasurer.

Last year, it awarded $380 million in tax credits for low-income housing.

The lawsuit alleges that “in order to avoid conducting public meetings,” the MHDC staff would email commissioners the “list of proposed funding recipients and…if a given commissioner had no objection, [MHDC] would implement the list as is.”

That violates the statutory requirement to hold a public, noticed meeting with recorded, affirmative votes, the lawsuit alleges.

The agency “knowingly violated the Missouri Sunshine law,” the lawsuit states, “each and every time funding was allocated without an affirmative vote, a meeting, notice of the meeting, and recording of the vote.”

The lawsuit is a last resort, Dan Curry, Mofle’s attorney, wrote in the court filing.

Curry also serves as attorney for the Missouri Press Association.

Mofle “has exhausted any and all required administrative prerequisites” in an attempt to gain satisfaction without going to court, Curry wrote. 

The lawsuit alleges Mofle was sexually harassed by a coworker and reported the behavior — which included “her tracking [Mofle’s] movements and stalking behaviors” — several times without resolution.

Mofle took leave at the end of July 2023 because he was uncomfortable working due to the alleged sexual harassment and the “anxiety of being asked to violate the law,” the lawsuit states.

He submitted a request for accommodations signed by his doctor to find another position that would “avoid the need to follow directives from executive staff to violate the Sunshine law,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit requests that the court void funding allocations that were made without proper votes.

A spokesperson for MHDC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Independent previously found that developers who make large political donations to statewide officers on the commission received a significant share of the awards.

Between 2018 and 2023, approximately $1 of every $6 in tax credits awarded since the start of 2018 has gone to the five developers who contribute the most.

At the last meeting, held in December, members of the commission asked no questions about the staff recommendations. One member said he’d just seen the recommendations for the first time during the meeting.

Andrew Bailey is hoping to win his first full term as Missouri's attorney general after being appointed to the position in November 2022 by Gov. Mike Parson (Photo provided by Andrew Bailey's campaign).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s efforts to delay sentencing in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York were rejected Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision came a day before Bailey won the Aug. 6 primary election against Will Scharf, a member of Trump’s legal team.

In a one-page order, the court refused to intervene in the case, meaning a gag order against Trump will remain in place and sentencing on his 34 felony convictions will move forward as scheduled next month.

Bailey argued the New York prosecution was politically motivated and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene because it has jurisdiction in cases involving one state suing another. He sought to delay sentencing until after the election and lift the gag order placed on Trump that prevents him from speaking out against prosecutors, court staff and their families.

The court rejected Bailey’s argument without comment.

“It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes,” Bailey posted on social media, adding that his office would continue to challenge the “illicit prosecutions against President Trump.”

Trump is slated to be sentenced just weeks before the November election after being convicted on 34 counts for falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Bailey’s loss on Monday earned a sharp rebuke from Will Scharf, who is running against the attorney general in Tuesday’s GOP primary. Scharf is part of Trump’s legal team that successfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken in office.

“I win the cases I file,” Scharf said. “My team and I have won case after case for President Trump, including at the Supreme Court.”

This story has been updated to reflect the results of the primary election.

Copies of the Aug. 16 edition of the Marion County Record rest on a countertop in the newspaper office. Staffers pulled an all-nighter to get the newspaper out after their equipment was seized by law enforcement. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA, Kan. — The magistrate who authorized last year’s police raid on the Marion County Record escaped discipline from a state panel by making claims that contradict statements in federal lawsuits about how the search warrants arrived in front of her and whether the police chief swore they were true before she signed them.

Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s secret explanation, obtained by Kansas Reflector, adds a new layer of confusion and mystery to how law enforcement were able to carry out the search and seizure of journalists’ computers and cellphones without regard for state and federal laws that prohibit such police action. It also raises concerns about the low standards set for judges by the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody prepared search warrant applications with the assistance of a sheriff’s deputy that accused newspaper reporter Phyllis Zorn of committing identity theft by looking up a driving record in a Kansas Department of Revenue public database. Publisher and editor Eric Meyer and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel were targeted for having a copy of the record.

In court documents, Cody said he emailed the search warrant applications to County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose office delivered them to the judge. Ensey, in an email he sent to himself a day after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid, said he printed off the applications without reading them and had an office manager deliver them to the judge. That email has been attached to court filings.

Kansas officials downplayed involvement in Marion newspaper raid. Here’s what they knew

A Topeka woman in April filed a complaint against Viar with the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct after reading Meyer’s lawsuit against Cody and others. The lawsuit questions whether the search warrants were legal if Cody never appeared before the judge.

In Viar’s response to the disciplinary panel, she wrote that District Judge Susan Robson approached her with an unknown law enforcement officer on the morning of the raid. According to Viar, Robson introduced the officer as Cody and said she couldn’t sign the warrants “because of her history with the city,” which isn’t explained. Cody led the judges to believe that Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents, who had assisted Cody in the investigation, were prepared to join the raid, even though they weren’t, Viar wrote.

“I can say with 100% certainty that I did not approve the search warrants and return them to Chief Cody until I had verified under oath his signature and the truthfulness of the statements in the supporting affidavits,” Viar wrote.

The disciplinary panel dismissed the complaint against Viar after receiving her response, according to a letter obtained by Kansas Reflector. It isn’t clear whether the panel, which operates in secrecy by Kansas Supreme Court rule, independently investigated the accuracy of Viar’s account.

The panel members who dismissed the complaint against Viar were Grant County District Judge Bradley Ambrosier; Kansas City, Kansas, attorney Tonda Jones Hill; Rosemary Kolich, of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth; Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Malone; and Johnson County Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan.

Viar didn’t respond to an email inquiry asking her to reconcile her account with the ones provided by Cody and Ensey.

The commission directed questions to Lisa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Office of Judicial Administration, who said, “I have no information related to this matter.”

Jared McClain, an attorney with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice who represents Herbel in her federal lawsuit over the raid, said he was surprised that Viar’s account differs “so drastically” from the police chief and county attorney.

“Those are completely different versions of the truth,” McClain said. “And I don’t see what Cody or Ensey could have to gain by telling their version of the story, because their version of the story is worse for them. But Viar’s is better for everyone. So if that were the truth, why did the other guys spend a year saying something different?”

McClain also said it was “obvious” there was no probable cause for the searches, because the police theory of a crime dealt with accessing a public record on a public website.

The same disciplinary panel previously dismissed a complaint against Viar that was based on the lack of evidence to support a crime, the federal and state laws that should have prevented the judge from signing the documents, and the violation of constitutional freedoms.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said she was disappointed the disciplinary panel had let Viar off the hook.

“It’s another level of accountability that will never happen,” Bradbury said.

Zorn, the reporter whose work became a pretext for the raid, said she was upset that police “came in with such a lousy excuse for a warrant.”

“This thing was political. And I wasn’t the target. I was actually the pawn,” Zorn said. “They seized upon something and used that as their excuse. And I will say this: I was raised by a small town cop who spent 18 and three-quarters years with highway patrol. He has been dead for four years. There’s no doubt in my mind he is still spinning in his grave.”

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Joe Amrine, who spent 16 years on death row in Missouri for a killing he did not commit, speaks at a news conference Thursday calling for Attorney General Andrew Bailey to drop his opposition to an innocence hearing for Marcellus Williams, set for Sept. 24. Amrine was joined by, from left, Ray Krone of Arizona, Herman LIndsey of Florida and Eric Anderson of Michigan, who have all been freed from death row after their innocence was proven (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A group of men exonerated after years on death row gathered at the Missouri Capitol Thursday to call on Attorney General Andrew Bailey to stop blocking efforts to vacate the conviction of Marcellus Williams.

Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24.

But since his 2001 conviction, new testing was able to determine DNA on the murder weapon matched someone else.

Four members of a group called Witness to Innocence, each of whom were sentenced only to later have their innocence revealed, shared their stories Thursday in Jefferson City and advocated for Williams’ release.

“We’re asking the Attorney General of Missouri to stop acting like innocence doesn’t matter,” said Herman Lindsey, executive director of Witness to Innocence and exoneree from Florida’s death row. “We are asking you to represent the people of Missouri by looking for the truth over politics.”

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is running for U.S. House, filed a motion earlier this year to vacate Williams’ conviction, and a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge will hold an evidentiary hearing Aug. 21.

Just 30 minutes after the exonerees began their press conference, Bailey joined Gov. Mike Parson one floor above in the Capitol for their own press conference on unauthorized cannabinoids.

Asked about Williams’ case, Bailey said: “The criminal justice system has to have a component of finality.”

“The juries of the state of Missouri under the Sixth Amendment have a right to participate in that process,” he said, “and we should respect and defer to the finality of the jury’s determination.”

Bailey said he doesn’t want to forget the evidence used in the original conviction.

The original case relied on testimony of  a witness who served as a jailhouse informant in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Williams’ isn’t the first case that has stirred questions of innocence after new evidence arrived post-conviction.

Among Witness to Innocence’s speakers was Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated in Missouri in 2003 after informants admitted to lying during trial. The Missouri Attorney General’s office, which at the time was then led by Democrat Attorney General Jay Nixon, acknowledged Amrie’s innocence but still pushed for execution.

Amrine’s case made it all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, where Judge Laura Denvir Stith questioned then-Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung: “Are you suggesting … even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?” 

“That’s correct, your honor,” Jung said.

For the last 30 years, the Missouri Attorney General’s office has opposed every innocence case.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s office is emphasizing winning and personal gain over truth and justice…. To them, executing a person is just the cost of doing business,” Lindsey said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Missouri has exonerated four people from death row and has killed 99 since 1976, with four executions in 2023.

Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, speaks on the Senate floor about his bill on gender-affirming care on Feb. 27, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A circuit court judge ruled Monday that state Sen. Mike Moon is immune from questioning in a legal challenge of Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming care that he sponsored in 2023.

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is stepping into Cole County for the case, agreed with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office that Moon should not be questioned under oath in the case. However, he ruled against the attorney general by rejecting a request to push the trial until after the U.S. Supreme Court hears a similar case.

Attorneys with the ACLU sought to ask Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, about his communications with lobbyists and advocacy groups in the creation of Missouri’s law. The ACLU is joined by law firms Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Lambda Legal seeking to stop the implementation of the law, which became effective nearly one year ago.

ACLU attorney Kristin Mulvey wrote in the plaintiff’s argument that Moon’s communications to advocacy groups, obtained by the ACLU via open records requests, show discriminatory intent in the law’s drafting process.

“Plaintiffs… should be able to examine communications the act’s sponsor had with third parties about the law as they are relevant to the reasons it was passed in Missouri and are likely to demonstrate that the real interests and motivations behind the passage of the act are not what the state claims them to be,” she argued.

The law, coined the SAFE Act, has placed restrictions on gender-affirming care for children, adults on Medicaid and incarcerated Missourians. The text “was apparently supplied by the interest group Family Policy Alliance,” Mulvey wrote.

Family Policy Alliance, based in Colorado Springs, uses religious doctrine to oppose gender-affirming care, gay marriage and abortion.

The attorney general’s office, in a motion filed by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Tkachuk, argued that Moon cannot be questioned because of “legislative privilege.”

He cites the Speech and Debate Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which says “for any speech or debate in either House, (senators and representatives) shall not be questioned in any other place.”

Mulvey argued the clause applies to Moon’s speech on the Senate floor but does not protect his communication with third parties. She emphasized voters amended  Missouri’s Constitution in 2018 clarifying that legislative records are open.

But Tkachuck said legislative intent is protected and, regardless, irrelevant to the law’s constitutionality.

Tkachuck said during Monday’s hearing that the subpoena of Moon was “unconstitutional, unprecedented and unhelpful.”

“The motivations of an individual legislator are not relevant to the constitutionality of a statute, which either meets constitutional muster on its merits or does not,” he wrote in the state’s argument.

Separately, the parties argued about the trial’s timeline. It is scheduled for a bench trial, meaning the judge rules on constitutionality, in late September.

Peter Donahue, assistant attorney general for special litigation, told Carter the witness list had been reduced to 35 people: 20 for plaintiffs and 15 for the state with “substantial discovery on both sides.”

Lawsuit seeks to block Missouri ban on transgender care for minors

The discovery process has been burdensome for both parties, with each asking Carter to force the disclosure of documents they deemed wrongfully withheld.

Donahue said he foresees litigation with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a third party the attorney general’s office is seeking information from for the case, to get documents.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said “nothing here in the discovery schedule compels the motion for a continuance.”

The attorney general’s office sought to delay until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Tennessee’s gender-affirming-care ban. Gonzalez-Pagan said it would likely be a year — a long time for the patients who have been denied medical care under the law.

“It just flies in the face of everything this case is about to say that in a delay of a year, no harm is caused,” he said.

There are matters that the Supreme Court case will not touch on, like Missouri’s restrictions for Medicaid patients and incarcerated individuals, Gonzalez-Pagan told Carter.

Other courts are hearing challenges to their state bans, and just one has delayed trial, though it was at the request of the plaintiff, he said.

Gonzalez-Pagan cautioned that the plaintiffs may age-out of the statute if delays continue.

“The plaintiffs in this case deserve their day in court,” he said. “By asking for a continuance, the state is in essence denying it.”

Missouri’s attorney general is embroiled in a handful of lawsuits after he launched an investigation of gender-affirming care. He has asked for records from those who provided hormone-replacement therapy prior to the law’s enforcement and called for the State Division of Professional Registration to prod therapists who have referred minors for gender-affirming care.

Moon could not be immediately reached for comment.

White and pink buds on dogwood and tulip trees brighten the Missouri State Capitol grounds in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that Missouri’s ban on lawmakers and legislative staff working as lobbyists for two years after leaving office is unconstitutional.

First enacted in 2018 as part of a voter-approved initiative called “Clean Missouri,” the revolving-door law was designed to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. But the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found the restriction violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Missouri had to show that it has a compelling anti-corruption interest and that its lobbying ban is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. It did neither,” said Judge David Stras, writing for a three-judge panel.

The lawsuit was filed by former state Rep. Rocky Miller and legislative assistant John LaVanchy, arguing that the two-year ban not only violates the First Amendment but improperly limits their employment opportunities. It was filed against the Missouri Ethics Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the ban.

Miller, a Republican from Lake Ozark, won four terms in the Missouri House and was re-elected to his final term in 2018 at the same election where voters passed the lobbying ban. About 10 months after he left office in January 2021, he received an offer to work as a paid lobbyist for Presidio, a waste management company with headquarters in his hometown.

Miller registered as a lobbyist after the ban expired. He currently has six active clients, including Presidio.

Monday’s decision overturns a ruling last year by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Harpool, who upheld the ban as a way to prevent corruption, noting public officials are fully aware that accepting a taxpayer-supported job also includes accepting restrictions on speech.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, answers reporters' questions following adjournment of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher is asking a Cole County judge to dismiss him from a whistleblower lawsuit filed earlier this year, arguing any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.” 

House Chief Clerk Dana Miller filed a lawsuit in May accusing Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation. It stems from disputes between Miller and Plocher that emerged last year over an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a lucrative software contract.

In a motion filed Friday with Cole Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, Plocher’s attorneys argue that the speaker is not a “public employer” that would allow him to be sued by Miller. 

The speaker “had no ability to discipline (Miller) or otherwise demote her,” Lowell Pearson, Plocher’s attorney, wrote in the motion, later noting that Miller, “simply did not suffer any type of ‘disciplinary action’ whatsoever. Indeed, she continues to work as the Chief Clerk of the House today.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House. Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She became chief clerk in 2018. She has said she plans to leave her position as clerk when her term is up in January 2025.

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

Pearson also argues that Miller is not a whistleblower and her case instead documents “political disagreements” with Plocher that don’t constitute the basis for a lawsuit.

Plocher, who is running for Missouri secretary of state in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

In the motion to dismiss, Pearson argues that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to Miller by a third party — not Plocher — and are therefore hearsay. 

The lawsuit, Pearson wrote, is simply “a political dispute between two political actors involving political questions. This court should not entertain (Miller’s) attempt to circumvent the political process through litigation and should dismiss the claim against Plocher.”

There have been no filings in the case from Jetton, who is also a named defendant, and no attorney is listed for him. Though the lawsuit was filed in May, plaintiffs have been unable to serve him with a summons to appear before the court. 

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Clay County judge on Friday refused to reverse her order from earlier this month that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey answer questions under oath about conversations with a local official that may have violated legal ethics rules.

Judge Karen Krauser ordered Bailey to sit for a deposition after it was discovered he and a deputy met with a member of the Jackson County Legislature without the knowledge of the county’s attorneys. 

Bailey filed a lawsuit in December over Jackson County’s property assessment process, and the Jackson County Legislature is a named defendant. 

The meetings appear to have violated the rules of professional conduct set out by the Missouri Supreme Court, which prohibit attorneys from meeting with individuals involved in a lawsuit without the consent of their lawyer. Krauser ordered Bailey to answer questions under oath about the meetings from Jackson County’s attorneys.

Jason Lewis, general counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, urged Krauser to reconsider her decision during a Thursday hearing, arguing that requiring Bailey to sit for a deposition could set a troubling precedent.

“The Attorney General’s Office has profound institutional interest that a sitting statewide official cannot be deposed in every case,” Lewis said.

Bailey has argued that Krauser’s order “chills the attorney general’s free-speech rights on the campaign trail,” since the meeting he had with the county official was “a brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit but where, at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

The judge did not lay out her reasoning for denying the motion to reconsider her order in the one-page ruling released Friday. She also denied Bailey’s motion to disqualify Jackson County’s attorneys from the property tax case. 

Bailey’s spokeswoman said the attorney general’s office is examining all legal options. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society in the Missouri House of Representatives last year. Bailey's office on Thursday asked a Clay County Circuit Judge to reverse her decision to let Jackson County attorneys take Bailey's deposition. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office urged a judge on Thursday not to require him to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against Jackson County, arguing county attorneys want information that “has nothing to do with the case.”

Jason Lewis, general counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, urged Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser to reconsider her decision to allow Bailey to be questioned under oath about his conversation with a Jackson County official. 

Bailey is suing the county over its property assessment process.

Given the Attorney General’s Office’s caseload, Lewis said, requiring Bailey to sit for a deposition could set a troubling precedent.

“The Attorney General’s Office has profound institutional interest that a sitting statewide official cannot be deposed in every case,” Lewis said. 

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Krauser’s order, issued two weeks ago, came in response to a motion for sanctions Jackson County attorneys filed because of Bailey and a deputy’s conversations with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith, which appear to have violated the rules of professional conduct set out by the Missouri Supreme Court. 

Under those rules, lawyers are not allowed to communicate with an opposing party in a lawsuit without the consent of that person’s lawyer. While Bailey doesn’t dispute the meetings occurred, he argues they were inconsequential and that the county has to exhaust other options for seeking information about the meetings before questioning a sitting attorney general. 

An outside attorney hired by Smith, also asking Krauser to overturn the order, likened Jackson County attorneys’ efforts to question Bailey over the meeting to an “atomic bomb” compared with less drastic ways to handle the issue. 

“This whole thing really appears to be a distraction from the merits of the case,” said the attorney, Brandon Boulware.

But Ryan Taylor, an attorney for Jackson County, argued the state had not been forthcoming on the issue. He quoted President Harry Truman, who “once said, ‘The buck stops here.’”

“What he meant by that was that anything that happens with his administration, he’s responsible for it,” Taylor said. 

He asked Krauser to stand by her order and allow the deposition to take place.

“If it was an innocent statement, then why can’t (he) just sit down and tell us about it?” Taylor said. 

The dispute stems from Bailey’s lawsuit against Jackson County over its property assessment process. Bailey claims the county’s process was flawed, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. 

Attorneys have argued Bailey waited too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. 

Bailey’s office has maintained the attorney general did nothing wrong in meeting with Smith and described it as a “brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit.” A filing from Bailey’s office says “at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

Lewis, echoing arguments in the state’s court filings, said the county should question other individuals present for the meeting before being granted access to Bailey because of a rule against depositions of top-level agency staff.

But time is short with the trial expected to wrap up in early August. 

“This is about the actions of the attorney general himself, people he was in a room with, people he talked to and what he heard,” Krauser said during Thursday’s hearing. 

Attorneys also argued over whether Jackson County’s counsel represents Smith as an individual or only the Jackson County Legislature as a body. Krauser said she believed Smith to be represented by the county’s attorneys.

Forcing a sitting attorney general to answer questions under oath is highly unusual, but Krauser said in her order that “the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules.”

Krauser did not say during the hearing how she would rule on the request to overturn the order granting the deposition. She said she would issue a written decision Friday.

The Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis, home of the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

A federal judge in St. Louis on Wednesday halted implementation of a Biden administration rule that extends protections for LGBTQ students, adding to the number of U.S. courts that have issued similar orders.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel of the Eastern District of Missouri came in a lawsuit filed on May 7 by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and the attorneys general of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota.

Sippel’s order enjoins the U.S. Department of Education, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and others from “implementing, enacting, enforcing or taking action in any manner to enforce” the nondiscrimination rule promulgated by the department that was set to take effect on Aug. 1. The order halts implementation of the rule until final resolution of the lawsuit.

Although the rule protects all students from nondiscrimination based on sex in educational activities and programs, opponents have focused on the extension of the protections to transgender students.

At a May press conference announcing the lawsuit, Griffin, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and a 15-year-old Jonesboro-area student athlete who is a named plaintiff focused on that aspect of the rule.

In a statement Wednesday, Griffin said Sippel’s “ruling is a victory for women and girls in Arkansas and across the nation.”

“Congress enacted Title IX to protect and promote educational opportunities for women and girls,” Griffin said, focusing again on fears that transgender girls would be allowed into women’s and girl’s locker rooms and onto girls’ sports teams.

The ruling “also protects teachers, administrators, and students from the threat of investigation or sanction for disagreeing with the gender ideology of the Biden-Harris White House. And it comes just in time before the start of the new school year,” Griffin said.

Missouri joins five other states in federal lawsuit over Title IX transgender protections

The lawsuit filed by Arkansas and the five other states argued the education department has exceeded its authority by rewriting the statute. It also claimed the rule violates the First Amendment, is arbitrary and capricious by going against “decades” of understanding of Title IX and presents “an actual controversy” by redefining “sex” to include gender identity.

Sippel’s ruling notes that his decision is consistent with other federal courts that have also blocked implementation of the Title IX rule. More than two dozen Republican attorneys general have sued over the rule and at least two federal appeals courts have upheld lower court rulings similar to the one issued Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana issued a temporary injunction on June 14 that blocks the updated Title IX policy from taking effect Aug. 1 in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld that order.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati also upheld a district court injunction against the Title IX rule affecting 20 states, including Oklahoma.

On Monday, the Biden administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily put on hold a portion of two injunctions issued by federal trial courts in Louisiana and Kentucky that affected 10 states, according to SCOTUSblog. Federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Cincinnati rejected the Department of Education’s request to allow it to temporarily enforce the rule, except for two provisions targeting discrimination against transgender students while its appeals continued.

This story was originally published by the Arkansas Advocate, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Christopher Dunn was convicted for a 1990 deadly shooting of a teen in St. Louis. Others involved in the case later admitted they lied about Dunn’s involvement. No DNA ever tied Dunn to the murder. A judge also admitted that the lack of evidence is enough to prove Dunn is innocent (photo submitted).

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the release of Christopher Dunn, days after a St. Louis judge ruled he has been wrongfully incarcerated for 33 years.

The three major-party candidates for Missouri attorney general, from left, Will Scharf, Andrew Bailey and Elad Gross (campaign photos).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey insists his office is working to hold the federal government accountable for the decades-old radioactive waste contamination that plagues the St. Louis area.

“We are fighting to ensure that the federal government protects Missourians from the poison that the federal government injected into the streams and creeks there in eastern Missouri,” he told The Independent. 

But the two candidates vying to oust him from the office say Bailey is just the latest in a long line of Missouri officials who have failed the victims who have suffered from the effects of radioactive contamination left in the area since World War II.

Activists tried for months last summer to get Bailey’s help, and “they were met with a closed door,” Will Scharf, who is challenging Bailey in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, told The Independent. 

Both Scharf and Elad Gross, the Democrat running for attorney general, say Bailey could be doing much more.

The St. Louis region was pivotal to the development of the world’s first atomic bomb in the 1940s. Uranium refined downtown was used in experiments in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project.

After the war, dangerous radioactive waste was dumped at the St. Louis airport right next to Coldwater Creek and contaminated the creek water and banks for miles. Generations of families moved into new suburban homes springing up along the creek without knowing the dangers it posed. A federal study shows children who played in its waters face a higher risk of cancer.

The waste sat at the airport for years before it was sold and moved to a property in Hazelwood also adjacent to the creek. A company bought it to extract valuable metals and trucked the remaining waste to the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton and dumped it illegally. It remains there today.

Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working to clean up the creek, and the Environment Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup of the landfill. 

But after an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed last summer that the federal government knew the waste posed a threat to St. Louis residents years before revealing that to the public, Missouri officials and activists have said the federal government should be held accountable for the damage.

Gross argued Bailey, as the state’s chief attorney, wasn’t doing enough to ensure that happens. 

“Our attorney general can sue Joe Biden for everything under the sun,” Gross said during a candidate forum last month, “but he can’t figure out how to sue him to protect Missouri families when we need him the most.”

Gross, who previously worked in the attorney general’s office, said the state should reinstate the environmental division, which was dissolved when Josh Hawley was attorney general in 2017. Bailey should have more attorneys dedicated to investigating nuclear waste and pushing the federal government for better management of the cleanup, Gross said.

If that’s not enough, Gross said, the state should sue the federal government. He pointed to Washington, where the attorney general’s office sued over the slow cleanup at the Hanford nuclear production facility and inadequate protections for workers.

The state previously sued Republic Services, which owns the West Lake Landfill, under former Attorney General Chris Koster over a subsurface smolder in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill that emitted a foul odor and risked coming into contact with the radioactive waste. It was settled under Hawley. 

Bailey said his office has reviewed documents the news organizations used in the investigation last summer and found that they “paint a picture of the federal government poisoning Missourians.” But he thinks there are documents missing. 

His office filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Energy in March seeking further information. Madeline Sieren, a spokeswoman for Bailey, said the attorney general’s office hasn’t received a response from the Department of Energy.

Those documents, Bailey said, will help determine whether the state should sue the federal government.

Bailey said he’s also supporting Hawley, who now serves in the U.S. Senate, as he seeks compensation for St. Louis residents who have developed cancer following exposure to the radioactive contamination. Hawley sought to add Missouri — along with southwestern states exposed to bomb testing — to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The 35-year-old federal program, however, expired before the U.S. House of Representatives took a vote on extending and expanding it. 

Last month, Bailey wrote to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, demanding that the agency put up signs along Coldwater Creek, where there is currently no warning that radioactive contamination may be present. 

Gross’ criticism, Bailey said, was “an oversimplification and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the attorney general’s office.” 

“I’m not withholding any tool at our disposal to ensure transparency, accountability and justice for the victims,” Bailey said. 

Gross said “writing letters is one thing.“Getting results is something entirely different.” 

Scharf called Bailey’s Freedom of Information Act request “a good start” but said he’d like to see if the state could sue the federal government or the private company that dumped waste in the West Lake Landfill.

“My strong suspicion,” Scharf said, “is that there is much more that can be done, from a legal perspective, to vindicate the rights of Missourians…who have been grievously injured by the federal action, federal inaction and the federal cover up here.”

The Independent’s Jason Hancock and Anna Spoerre contributed to this story.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey addresses a crowd at the state Supreme Court Building after being sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey doesn’t believe he should have to sit for a deposition over an alleged ethics breach by his office, arguing in a motion filed Thursday that a judge must reverse her “unprecedented order.”

Clay County Circuit Court Judge Karen Krauser issued an order last week allowing attorneys for Jackson County to question Bailey under oath about his interactions with a county official that appeared to have violated rules of professional conduct set by the state Supreme Court.

Bailey’s office is suing Jackson County over its property assessment process. 

Attorneys are not allowed to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without consent. Members of the Jackson County Legislature are represented — along with the county executive and other defendants in the case — by the Jackson County Counselor’s Office.

In a motion filed Thursday, Bailey’s office called the judge’s order “incorrect as to the facts and the law” and argued it disregards a rule against depositions of top-level agency officials. Legal experts interviewed by The Independent said forcing a sitting attorney general to sit for a deposition was highly unusual. 

Beyond that, Bailey’s office argues, the attorney general’s interactions with the county official, Sean Smith, amounted to “a brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit but where, at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

“This order chills the attorney general’s free-speech rights on the campaign trail and effectively imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint on his speech, as well as on the speech of others that talk to him, which the attorney general cannot control,” Bailey’s motion states. 

Bailey included the motion — along with a motion to disqualify Jackson County’s attorneys from representing the county legislature — in a press release announcing the filing. Neither document shows as having been officially filed on the state courts website.

In the motion to disqualify, Bailey said Jackson County attorneys’ representation of legislators poses an “egregious conflict of interest.” 

Questions about Bailey’s interactions with Smith arose as part of his lawsuit against Jackson County over its property assessment process. 

Bailey’s lawsuit claims Jackson County violated a law requiring it to offer physical inspections to homeowners whose properties had increased in value by more than 15%. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and argued Bailey waited too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

A spokeswoman said the county does not comment on ongoing litigation. 

Krauser’s order came in response to a motion for sanctions filed by attorneys for Jackson County, arguing both Bailey and a deputy violated attorney conduct rules when they discussed the case with Smith. 

But while the county has maintained that it did not violate the law when it reassessed property values, Bailey’s motion says, some members of the legislature have acknowledged problems with the process or called it illegal. He argues that poses a conflict of interest and that attorneys for the county cannot represent both the county and legislators. 

Legislators also passed a resolution calling for the results of the 2023 assessment process to be set aside and that property values be increased by 15% across the board. 

“Even though both the legislature and the other county entities are all defendants in this case, their interests are directly adverse,” Bailey said. “The Jackson County Counselor’s Office’s representation of the legislature while representing these other defendants is, therefore, improper and a conflict of interest.” 

Bailey’s motion cites statements made by only two legislators who took issue with the property assessment process. There are nine members of the Jackson County Legislature.

In his motion to vacate Krauser’s order requiring a deposition, Bailey said attorneys for the county had already been allowed to question staffers from his office over the meetings with Smith. The county attorneys, he said, didn’t present a compelling case about why they need testimony from Bailey himself.

Another staffer in Bailey’s office sat for a deposition about the meeting between Bailey and Smith but gave little information about the conversation beyond that the two discussed the property assessment case and discussed “preparing a joint statement regarding this lawsuit.”

A federal judge put a Missouri law on hold that would prevent pharmacists from alerting patients that some medicines they’ve been prescribed are debunked for treating COVID-19. But the state pharmacy board just posted guidelines about it anyway (Mint Images/Getty Images).

A politically charged Missouri law that would prevent pharmacists from counseling patients or doctors about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, two treatments that have been debunked for COVID-19, has been on hold for two years in federal court.

Yet the Missouri Board of Pharmacy posted a guidance statement at the end of June that doesn’t mention that the law is on hold pending legal challenge.

The guidance tells licensed pharmacists that state law bars them from “contact(ing) the prescribing physician or the patient to dispute the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use.”

Gov. Mike Parson signed it into law in June 2022, soon after COVID deaths had reached 1 million in the United States. The law drew criticism across the pharmacy and medical professions that saw it as a government-imposed gag order.

A St. Louis pharmacist filed a lawsuit the next month to stop the law. Ashley Stock sued members of the state pharmacy board, arguing that the law violated her First Amendment rights and should not be enforced.

Missouri governor signs law shielding doctors prescribing ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine

As a retail pharmacist, Stock said in her complaint, her job was to consult with patients and doctors about medications, doses and potential interactions.

She said she had confronted doctors who had prescribed hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, or ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication, about the drugs’ effectiveness against a virus.

“If, after Stock’s discussions, the prescribing physicians or patients insisted on seeking (the medications),” her lawsuit said, “Stock sometimes refused to fill those prescriptions.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to advise that ivermectin is not authorized or approved to treat COVID-19, nor has it been determined to be “safe or effective.” In 2020, the FDA warned that hydroxychloroquine could cause heart rhythm problems and should not be used outside a hospital setting. The drug also does not work to treat or prevent COVID.

But using both drugs to fight the virus — as then-President Donald Trump hyped them — became touchstones for some conservatives.

By restricting how pharmacists can do their jobs and how they treat patients, Stock and other pharmacists have argued, the law could set a dangerous precedent and damage their ability to act as important watchdogs for patients’ health care, such as noticing potential allergies, drug interactions or other risks that might have been overlooked by a doctor.

A federal judge granted a temporary injunction in response to Stock’s complaint in August 2022. This summer, both sides filed motions that would dismiss the case in their favor without a trial.

While that’s pending, the law is not in effect.

Matthew J. Tkachuk, the assistant state attorney general defending the pharmacy board in the lawsuit, said the guidance posted on the board’s website on June 26 offers insight about how the board plans to enforce the law if the judge allows it to take effect.

“Essentially, the guidance statement is not practically effective until the court … rules in our favor on summary judgment,” Tkachuk said. “It provides a lot of clarification and, to some extent, qualification, that might allay some pharmacists’ concerns.”

The board’s guidance says the 2022 ban on pharmacists proactively contacting doctors and patients about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine should be seen within the context of the entire statute that governs how pharmacists are regulated.

The guidance points out that pharmacists should not provide false, misleading, deceptive or dishonest counseling.

“This would include initiating contact with a prescriber or patient to dispute that ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine are efficacious for human use as approved by the FDA,” the board guidance says.

It also says the law change passed two years ago “does not prohibit a pharmacist from sharing truthful and accurate medical/drug information with prescribers or patients, consistent with the standard of care, current FDA guidance, or evidence-based scientific data/research.”

The guidance does not give any indication that a federal judge could decide to strike it from the state statute. It also doesn’t acknowledge the court injunction that’s at least temporarily nullified the change.

Besides that, said Adam E. Schulman, the Virginia lawyer representing Stock, board guidance doesn’t hold the same weight as law.

“They’re trying to get the judge to change his mind,” Schulman said. “But (guidance) doesn’t change what is on the books.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Advocates with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests speak in front of the Missouri Supreme Court Building Wednesday afternoon before delivering a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Survivors of abuse are asking Missouri’s attorney general to proceed with the trial of the co-owner of Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, a now-shuttered boarding school for troubled girls in Cedar County.

Stephanie Householder, who ran the school with her husband Boyd Householder, faces 21 charges of child abuse and neglect alleged by former Circle of Hope students. Her husband had nearly 80 charges, including allegations of sexual abuse. 

But he died of a “cardiac incident,” according to his attorney’s statement published by KCUR.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey offered Householder a plea deal in 2023 if she would testify against her husband. She rejected the offer.

David Clohessy, Missouri volunteer director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters on Wednesday that he “suspects and fears the attorney general will offer her another plea deal.”

The attorney general’s office told The Independent it has “no pending offers of a plea deal.”

“For me, (a plea deal) is a huge slap in the face,” said Maggie Drew, who lived at Circle of Hope from 2007 to 2013. “That woman never showed mercy to any of us, and I don’t think it should be shown to her now.”

Drew said she broke bones while at Circle of Hope and was told to “walk it off” by Householder.

“I never thought I’d make it,” Drew said.

Survivors delivered a letter to Bailey Wednesday asking him not to extend additional deals. Householder is scheduled for a jury trial in October.

“While the trial will be emotionally very hard for many of us in the short term, in the long run, we are convinced that it will be a powerful deterrent to others who might commit or conceal crimes against children,” Householder’s daughter Amanda wrote in a letter on behalf of a group of survivors.

Clohessy said a trial is important for survivors to “speak their truth” and inform the public beyond what has already been reported.

Adria Keim, who worked at Circle of Hope at the age of 19, said the environment was “manipulative.” Within a month of working at the boarding school, she was left overnight with almost 20 teenage girls to manage, she alleged.

She said the school’s Christian affiliation did not align with the leaders’ actions.

“I know that God absolutely hates what was done at Circle of Hope in his name,” Keim said.

Clohessy wants Bailey to investigate other Christian boarding schools for troubled teens after such schools in Missouri have been forcibly shut down.

He asked Bailey in April to begin proactive investigations, saying the schools lack oversight.

Clohessy wasn’t sure what other state attorneys general have done about reports of abuse at boarding schools and camps, for the problem extends beyond Missouri. But he expects that some states are taking a better look.

“It would be hard to do worse than to do absolutely nothing,” he said.

Before delivering the letter to Bailey, the group packed letters to send to county sheriffs asking for local investigations as well.

“Our goal,” Clohessy said, “is to beg sheriffs and prosecutors to be proactive and investigate the facilities in their counties.”

In a statement, the attorney general’s office explained Bailey only steps into criminal cases when appointed by the governor or local authorities.

“As a former prosecutor, Attorney General Bailey takes crime very seriously,” a spokesperson said. “We have seen a 133% increase in requests from local law enforcement and prosecutors to prosecute cases since Bailey took office.”

This story has been updated to include comment from the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters after being sworn into office on Jan. 3. 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey does not believe it was improper to meet with a Jackson County official as his office sues the county, he told The Independent Thursday. 

Bailey’s comments came after a judge ordered him to sit for a deposition about the meeting, which may have violated legal ethics rules. In an interview, Bailey said his office was “weighing legal options to correct the mistake that we feel like the judge made in that case.”

“There’s nothing unethical for two Republican candidates for office to meet and talk about politics,” Bailey said.

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Clay County Circuit Court Judge Karen Krauser ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be questioned under oath as a form of sanction for meeting with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith.  

The attorney general’s office is suing the county over its property assessment process, and the rules of professional conduct laid out by the Missouri Supreme Court prohibit attorneys from commuting about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case without their lawyer’s consent. 

The judge has already determined that one of Bailey’s deputies violated the rules.

Asked if he would sit for the deposition, Bailey said he was “going to do whatever the law requires.”

“But we don’t think it’s proper for the court to essentially attach a form of liability for two Republican candidates for political office who have a campaign-related meeting,” Bailey said.

Krauser’s order stems from meetings Bailey and one of his deputies, Travis Wood, had with Smith this spring. 

Attorneys representing both the county  and the county legislature said in a motion for sanctions that Bailey’s office showed a “blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct” in meeting with Smith without their knowledge. They asked for several sanctions, including dismissal of the case, disqualification of Bailey from litigating the case or for permission to take Bailey’s deposition.

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

Krauser, who is handling the case after all of the Jackson County Circuit Court judges recused themselves, ruled on Tuesday that attorneys for the county could require Bailey to sit for a deposition. 

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

The attorney general’s office has been in litigation with the county since December when Bailey sued over Jackson County’s property assessment process. The lawsuit names as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit claims the county violated the law when it assessed property values last year resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw their values increase, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties.

The increase in property values means some owners will have to pay more each year in taxes. 

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Requiring the state’s top lawyer to sit for a deposition is exceedingly rare, according to legal experts. And the admonishment from the judge drew criticism from rivals vying for Bailey’s job.

“It is absolutely outrageous that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign,” said Will Scharf, who is running in the Republican primary for attorney general against Bailey.

Bailey’s campaign responded with a statement criticizing Scharf for working in the scandal-plagued administration of former Gov. Eric Greitens and accused Jackson County of misleading the judge.

Elad Gross, who is running for attorney general as a Democrat, said on social media “we need to fire our corrupt attorney general.”

“Attorney General Andrew Bailey repeatedly violates Missouri ethics rules,” Gross said. “He takes money from opponents. He makes up facts. He sells out the people of Missouri for campaign cash and uses taxpayer resources to support his campaign.”

This story was updated at 2:55 p.m. to include a statement from Bailey’s campaign and correct a misspelling.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks in January 2023 to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society in the Missouri House chamber. A Clay County Circuit Judge ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be deposed over a possible ethics violation in the state's case against Jackson County over its property assessment process. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey can be questioned under oath about interactions with a Jackson County official that appear to  have violated legal ethics rules, a judge ruled Tuesday. 

The order forcing Bailey to sit for a deposition — which legal experts interviewed by The Independent agreed was highly unusual — stems from meetings he and one of his deputies had with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith. The attorney general’s office is currently suing the county over its property assessment process.

Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer. Both Bailey and Travis Woods, an assistant attorney general, discussed the case with Smith, according to Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser’s order.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

Krauser’s order came in response to a request for sanctions, including the ability to question Bailey, filed by attorneys representing Jackson County. She did not grant other sanctions that were requested, including disqualifying the attorney general’s office from the case.

“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his office have exhibited a blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct in this case,” the motion filed by Jackson County says, “and their actions are sanctionable. Based on what we know so far, their actions were not innocent mistakes.” 

Both Jackson County and Bailey’s office declined comment. Smith did not return a request for comment.

In a filing in opposition to Jackson County’s, Bailey’s office accused the county of grasping for straws and said the rules don’t support “granting these radical requests.”

“This court should reject defendants’ latest attempt to distract from the facts and legal claims brought by the state government,” the state’s filing says.

Chuck Hatfield, a longtime Jefferson City attorney who served as chief of staff to former Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon, said a lot of judges would be troubled by the meetings between the attorney general and Smith. 

Jackson County’s lawyers, Hatfield said, should have been informed.

“It almost looks like they intentionally kept it from (Jackson County’s lawyers),” Hatfield said, “and that’s quite unprofessional. And the judge appears to think it was unethical, and that seems like a valid judgment to me.” 

Hatfield said he wasn’t aware of a Missouri attorney general being deposed since John Ashcroft, who served in the late 1970s and early 1980s before going on to become Missouri governor, a U.S. senator and finally U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush. 

“This is really unusual,” Hatfield said of Bailey’s impending deposition. 

Bailey filed a lawsuit in December over Jackson County’s property assessment process. It named as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit accuses Jackson County of failing to comply with the law when it assessed properties in 2023, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw an increase in property value, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties in the county. 

The increase in property value means owners will have to pay more in property taxes each year.

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Attorneys for Jackson County filed a motion for sanctions against the attorney general last month, citing the meetings Smith had with Bailey in April and Woods in May. 

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

The attorney general’s office filing in response says Smith has made numerous public statements criticizing the property assessment process.

“He has already testified at trial in this case, and in that testimony made clear that he believes Jackson County’s assessment practices were inappropriate,” the filing says. “He has voted on resolutions that are manifestly adverse to the rest of the county’s position in this case.” 

Even so, the filing says, the attorney general’s office has ceased communicating with Smith, who is running for the U.S. House as a Republican.

Krauser agreed with the county, writing in her order that Smith regularly consults with the county’s lawyers regarding issues central to the lawsuit and has power as an elected official to impact the case.

“This court has the authority to impose sanctions for conduct which abuses the judicial process, which includes violations of professional conduct,” Krauser wrote. 

After oral arguments in the case on Monday, the order says, Bailey’s office provided notes from Woods’ meeting with Smith. The notes didn’t include information subject to attorney-client privilege, Krauser wrote.

Another staffer in Bailey’s office sat for a deposition about the meeting between Bailey and Smith and their respective campaigns but gave little information about the conversation beyond that the two discussed the property assessment case and discussed “preparing a joint statement regarding this lawsuit.”

Smith posted to his campaign social media account that his team visited with Bailey. 

“Both of us feeling great about our races,” Smith said. “Thankful for the efforts of the AG in holding those responsible for our property tax debacle accountable.” 

Will Scharf, who is running against Bailey in the Republican primary for attorney general, said in a statement that the dispute was “yet another example of Andrew Bailey putting politics before his duties as attorney general.” 

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Scharf said, “that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign.”

This story was updated at 5:38 p.m. to include newly-disclosed filings in the lawsuit.

A federal rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leading a coalition of seven states challenging a rule by the Biden administration that would preempt state restrictions on gender-affirming care. 

Filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on Wednesday, the states are seeking to block the regulation and prevent the federal government from enforcing similar mandates.

The rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The rule was set to go into effect July 5, with some provisions beginning later. But another coalition of attorneys general succeeded in their petition to block its implementation just two days prior. The judge in that case cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn “Chevron Deference,” a precedent that gave regulatory authority to federal agencies when statute is unclear.

Bailey, along with attorneys general from Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho and Arkansas, argues that the rule conflicts with their states’ restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. Each has varying restrictions on payments for gender-affirming treatment, with Missouri blocking payment for all treatments for medical transition through Medicaid and CHIP.

“… states will be unable to enforce these duly enacted laws and longstanding policies without coming into conflict with the rule,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit.

The American College of Pediatricians joins the attorneys general as a plaintiff. The ACPeds is a group of 400 physicians and other health care professionals in 47 states with a history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy.

“ACPeds members categorically do not provide medical interventions or referrals for, and do not facilitate or speak in ways that affirm the legitimacy of, the practice of ‘gender transition,’” the attorneys general wrote.

The lawsuit alleges that the organization’s pediatricians would suffer “significant financial harm to lose eligibility to participate in federal healthcare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.”

One pediatrician in Utah is quoted in the lawsuit saying he would not “self-censor his opinions on transition efforts if the rule goes into effect.”

Predicting his noncompliance with the rule, the Utah pediatrician “faces the prospect of no longer caring for his patients, being fired from his employment and being unable to practice medicine in most settings,” the attorneys general wrote.

The rule violates physicians’ freedom of assembly, the lawsuit states, “by coercing them to participate in facilities, programs, groups and other healthcare-related endeavors that are contrary to their views and that express messages with which they disagree.”

The lawsuit also says it “coerces ACPeds members’ speech.”

“By forcing ACPeds members to tell patients directly, on their walls, and on their websites that they do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, the rule forces ACPeds members to speak falsely, and it forces ACPeds members to fatally undermine their communication of their own medical ethical standards,” it says.

Beyond questions of constitutionality, the attorneys general allege that the rule goes beyond congressional authorization.

The rule interprets gender identity as protected by both including gender dysphoria as a disability and interpreting sex discrimination to include gender identity. The attorneys general disagree with this application.

Key to the case will be the judge’s interpretation of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Case Bostock v. Clayton County, in which a majority of justices ruled that gender identity was protected under Title VII, which is on employment discrimination.

The rule leans on some courts’ interpretation that transfers the Bostock decision to Title IX and the Affordable Care Act, according to its publication in the Federal Register. But the attorneys general cite decisions from judges in red states that do not allow Bostock to apply outside of Title VII.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is the defendant in the litigation, did not respond to a request for comment.

Civil Courts Building in St. Louis (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent)

A St. Louis judge on Friday determined Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has no right to access unredacted private health information of transgender children treated at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte ruled that Washington University does not have to provide the unredacted medical records sought by the attorney general’s office as part of his investigation into the clinic’s practices. 

Whyte found that the health information sought in Bailey’s demands is protected, and the data is not relevant to an investigation under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which is the state’s consumer protection law. 

A third layer of protection for the information, the judge ruled, is the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which prohibits the disclosure of personal health information without authorization.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

The attorney general’s demands  “are not specific and limited in scope to the extent reasonably practicable in light of the purpose for which the information is sought, and respondent has not shown that de-identified information could not be reasonably used for the purpose for which it is sought,” Whyte wrote.

Bailey began looking into gender-affirming care at the Washington University Transgender Center in March 2023 after the center’s former case manager Jamie Reed provided an affidavit alleging rushed treatment.

The attorney general’s office sent civil investigative demands, which are similar to subpoenas, for health records to Washington University and other providers of gender-affirming care to minors, and four facilities filed suit against his requests for information.

Washington University, according to Friday’s ruling, responded to Bailey’s demand and gave him redacted records.

One of Bailey’s demands was for the university to, “identify all clients to whom you have provided your services. For each client, describe your services, the dates you provided your services, the amounts clients, their insurance or other third-party payors paid for these services and any contracts related to these services.”

The attorney general’s office also wanted “access to all electronic health records of clients,” according to the judgment.

Bailey said the redacted records were insufficient and asked the court to force Washington University to produce the documents in full. His reasoning for needing the information, though, was outside the bounds of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, Whyte determined.

Whyte recalled the attorney general arguing that he was looking into fraudulent billing of insurance and alleged that redactions removed communications about “red flag tracking” and patients who had discontinued treatment. That wasn’t a sufficient argument, Whyte ruled.

The judge wrote that the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act does not require “blind obedience to the attorney general’s civil investigative demands,” noting one section of the law that specifically exempts privileged material.

Bailey plans to appeal the order.

“There is no fight more important than the fight to make Missouri the safest state in the nation for children,” he said in a statement to The Independent. “My team remains undeterred in our quest to protect children. No stone will be left unturned in these investigations.”

Whyte is also presiding over a similar case involving demands for records from the St. Louis-based branch of Planned Parenthood, though in that case no records have been turned over to the attorney general at all.

Two other cases over Bailey’s access to medical records are playing out across the state in Jackson County, where Circuit Court Judge Joel Fahnestock ordered Kansas City’s Planned Parenthood organization and Children’s Mercy Hospital to produce requested documents

Planned Parenthood appealed in February, and the judge’s order is placed on hold until after appeal. Children’s Mercy did not appeal.

This article has been updated following comment from the attorney general’s office.

Darrell McClanahan of Milo, a candidate for governor who the Missouri Republican Party attempted to remove from the ballot for being an 'honorary' KKK member. He is shown in a photo from his 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate, standing in front of the flag of the Missouri State Guard, a military force formed in 1861 to oppose the Union in the Civil War (Campaign photo).

An “honorary KKK member” will lead the list of Republicans on the ballot for Missouri governor in the Aug. 6  primary, in part because it is too late for an appeal court to hear a case seeking to remove his name.

And eight candidates for county office in Vernon County will also be on the ballot despite efforts by the county Republican central committee to have them stricken.

In decisions handed down Tuesday, the Western District Missouri Court of Appeals dismissed the two cases as moot. State law doesn’t allow the courts to change ballots later than eight weeks before the primary, the judges wrote.

“The names of the eight candidates cannot now be stricken or removed from the ballot, and the ballot cannot be modified in any way,” Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote in the opinion dismissing the Vernon County appeal.

In the Vernon County case, the eight candidates refused to participate in the vetting process devised by the county committee to test whether candidates are truly Republican enough to represent the party.

The candidates who the party wanted to exclude are four incumbents – the current county assessor, county treasurer, public administrator and an associate commissioner as well as two candidates for sheriff and two candidates for a commission seat.

A trial court in Vernon County sided with the county central committee, which refused to accept the filing fees of the eight candidates, and directed the county clerk to remove the candidates. The court of appeals ordered them restored to the ballot when the appeal was filed but since that date, Hardwick wrote, the last date for the courts to make changes to the ballot has passed.

In the other case, from Cole County, the Missouri Republican Party lost a lawsuit seeking to kick Darrell McClanahan III off the ballot for governor. McClanahan, a resident of Milo in Vernon County, is listed first, with eight other candidates.

The state party doesn’t want McClanahan on the ballot because he admitted being an “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. McClanahan also faces felony property damage and stealing charges in a case being heard in Wright County.

The state Republican Party sued Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to remove McClanahan, but Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote that by accepting his $500 filing fee, the party was stuck with him.

Walker issued his order on May 17. The state Republican Party waited until June 17 to file its notice of appeal, almost a week after the June 11 deadline for the courts to order changes to the ballot.

The order signed by Chief Judge Anthony Gabbert does not discuss the merits of the appeal. It cites the law limiting judicial power and states the court “would be unable to grant relief.”

The core of both cases is whether political parties can control who appears on the primary ballot by refusing filing fees. 

For state candidates like McClanahan, the fee must be paid directly to the political party. Candidates for county offices can pay the fee at the local election authority office and it is then forwarded to the local party.

The secretary of state’s office won’t allow a candidate to file if they do not have the receipt showing their filing fee has been accepted. In the Vernon County case, the clerk accepted the fee and the filing paperwork at the same time, only to learn later that the party refused the money.

In 2018, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a political party had no legal duty to accept the filing fee. The case involved a state candidate and the law that allowed candidates to pay the fee to the secretary of state as local candidates can to their election authority has since been changed to require direct payments to the party.

There is no similar precedent covering filing fees that are payable to local committees. In the ruling on the Vernon County case, Hardwick noted that both parties asked that the case be heard to provide guidance in future elections. 

“Because there is no practical effect on the ballot from taking either of these actions,” Hardwick wrote, “we decline both requests.”

(Al Drago/Getty Images)

A landmark Supreme Court decision that reins in federal agencies’ authority is expected to hold dramatic consequences for the nation’s health care system, calling into question government rules on anything from consumer protections for patients to drug safety to nursing home care.

The June 28 decision overturns a 1984 precedent that said courts should give deference to federal agencies in legal challenges over their regulatory or scientific decisions. Instead of giving priority to agencies, courts will now exercise their own independent judgment about what Congress intended when drafting a particular law.

The ruling will likely have seismic ramifications for health policy. A flood of litigation — with plaintiffs like small businesses, drugmakers, and hospitals challenging regulations they say aren’t specified in the law — could leave the country with a patchwork of disparate health regulations varying by location.

Agencies such as the FDA are likely to be far more cautious in drafting regulations, Congress is expected to take more time fleshing out legislation to avoid legal challenges, and judges will be more apt to overrule current and future regulations.

Health policy leaders say patients, providers, and health systems should brace for more uncertainty and less stability in the health care system. Even routine government functions such as deciding the rate to pay doctors for treating Medicare beneficiaries could become embroiled in long legal battles that disrupt patient care or strain providers to adapt.

Groups that oppose a regulation could search for and secure partisan judges to roll back agency decision-making, said Andrew Twinamatsiko, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute. One example could be challenges to the FDA’s approval of a medication used in abortions, which survived a Supreme Court challenge this term on a technicality.

“Judges will be more emboldened to second-guess agencies,” he said. “It’s going to open agencies up to attacks.”

U.S. Supreme Court flips precedent that empowered federal agencies

Regulations are effectively the technical instructions for laws written by Congress. Federal agency staffers with knowledge related to a law — say, in drugs that treat rare diseases or health care for seniors — decide how to translate Congress’ words into action with input from industry, advocates, and the public.

Up until now, when agencies issued a regulation, a single rule typically applied nationwide. Following the high court ruling, however, lawsuits filed in more than one jurisdiction could result in contradictory rulings and regulatory requirements — meaning health care policies for patients, providers, or insurers could differ greatly from one area to another.

One circuit may uphold a regulation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, while other circuits may take different views.

“You could have eight or nine of 11 different views of the courts,” said William Buzbee, a professor at Georgetown Law.

A court in one circuit could issue a nationwide injunction to enforce its interpretation while another circuit disagrees, said Maura Monaghan, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton. Few cases are taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, which could leave clashing directives in place for many years.

In the immediate future, health policy leaders say agencies should brace for more litigation over controversial initiatives. A requirement that most Affordable Care Act health plans cover preventive services, for example, is already being litigated. Multiple challenges to the mandate could mean different coverage requirements for preventive care depending on where a consumer lives.

Drugmakers have sued to try to stop the Biden administration from implementing a federal law that forces makers of the most expensive drugs to negotiate prices with Medicare — a key cog in President Joe Biden’s effort to lower drug prices and control health care costs.

Parts of the health care industry may take on reimbursement rates for doctors that are set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services because those specific rates aren’t written into law. The agency issues rules updating payment rates in Medicare, a health insurance program for people 65 or older and younger people with disabilities. Groups representing doctors and hospitals regularly flock to Washington, D.C., to lobby against trims to their payment rates.

And providers, including those backed by deep-pocketed investors, have sued to block federal surprise-billing legislation. The No Surprises Act, which passed in 2020 and took effect for most people in 2022, aims to protect patients from unexpected, out-of-network medical bills, especially in emergencies. The high court’s ruling is expected to spur more litigation over its implementation.

“This really is going to create a tectonic change in the administrative regulatory landscape,” Twinamatsiko said. “The approach since 1984 has created stability. When the FDA or CDC adopt regulations, they know those regulations will be respected. That has been taken back.”

Industry groups, including the American Hospital Association and AHIP, an insurers’ trade group, declined to comment.

Agencies such as the FDA that take advantage of their regulatory authority to make specific decisions, such as the granting of exclusive marketing rights upon approval of a drug, will be vulnerable. The reason: Many of their decisions require discretion as opposed to being explicitly defined by federal law, said Joseph Ross, a professor of medicine and public health at Yale School of Medicine.

“The legislation that guides much of the work in the health space, such as FDA and CMS, is not prescriptive,” he said.

In fact, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in an episode of the “Healthcare Unfiltered” podcast last year that he was “very worried” about the disruption from judges overruling his agency’s scientific decisions.

The high court’s ruling will be especially significant for the nation’s federal health agencies because their regulations are often complex, creating the opportunity for more pitched legal battles.

Challenges that may not have succeeded in courts because of the deference to agencies could now find more favorable outcomes.

“A whole host of existing regulations could be vulnerable,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF.

Other consequences are possible. Congress may attempt to flesh out more details when drafting legislation to avoid challenges — an approach that may increase partisan standoffs and slow down an already glacial pace in passing legislation, Levitt said.

Agencies are expected to be far more cautious in writing regulations to be sure they don’t go beyond the contours of the law.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision overturned Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that courts should generally back a federal agency’s statutory interpretation as long as it was reasonable. Republicans have largely praised the new ruling as necessary for ensuring agencies don’t overstep their authority, while Democrats said in the aftermath of the decision that it amounts to a judicial power grab.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak to the media after being found guilty following his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024, in New York City. Trump’s attorney has asked the court to set aside the guilty verdicts, the first for a former U.S. president, after a Monday U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted broad presidential immunity (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A New York judge agreed Tuesday to delay the criminal sentencing of former President Donald Trump in the state hush money case after Trump claimed the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision absolves him.

New York Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the case, ordered the delay until Sept. 18 so the court could hear arguments on how the Supreme Court’s immunity decision on Monday impacts Trump’s state-level convictions, according to court filings.

Trump claims his 34 New York felony guilty verdicts violate Monday’s high court ruling and should be thrown out, according to a letter to Merchan from Trump attorney Todd Blanche.

“The verdicts in this case violate the presidential immunity doctrine and create grave risks of ‘an Executive Branch that cannibalizes itself,’” Blanche wrote, adding that after further review, “it will be manifest that the trial result cannot stand.”

A Manhattan jury on May 30 found the former president guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to a porn star in the weeks prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed in a letter to Merchan to a two-week delay in Trump’s sentencing, according to the court filings.

Trump’s team has until July 10 to file its argument. Bragg agreed to a July 24 deadline for his reply.

“Although we believe (the) defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” Bragg wrote Tuesday.

Merchan scheduled the sentencing for July 11, just days before Trump is scheduled to be officially nominated as his party’s 2024 presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The new date pushes the sentencing less than two months before Election Day.

Presidential immunity opinion

The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that former U.S. presidents enjoy absolute criminal immunity for “core Constitutional” powers and are “entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” but are not immune from criminal prosecution for “unofficial acts.”

Trump escalated the question of presidential immunity to the Supreme Court after two lower courts denied his requests for immunity from federal criminal charges alleging he attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results during his last months in the Oval Office.

The justices’ majority opinion ordered the 2020 election interference case back to the lower district court to decide whether Trump’s actions were official or unofficial acts. Those actions include Trump’s conversations with state officials about overturning election results and his social media posts claiming election fraud.

NY verdict 

Blanche asked Merchan to “set aside” Trump’s guilty verdict based on Monday’s Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States, according to the July 1 letter.

Blanche claimed that evidence presented by the prosecution against Trump during the New York case were likely “official acts.”

The New York state case centered on actions Trump took during his first year in office, including an Oval Office meeting to discuss financial transactions with his former personal attorney and checks that he personally signed.

“Under (Trump v. U.S.), this official-acts evidence should never have been put before the jury,” Blanche wrote.

“Moreover, as we argued previously, (Trump v. U.S.) forbids the ‘[u]se of evidence about such [official] conduct, even when an indictment alleges only unofficial conduct.’ This includes President Trump’s ‘Tweets’ and ‘public address[es],’” Blanche wrote, quoting directly from the Supreme Court opinion.

New York prosecutors presented mounds of evidence, including business records and witness testimony, during the seven-week trial illustrating that Trump repaid his former lawyer Michael Cohen for giving $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. Trump later recorded the payments as “legal expenses” and increased the amount to Cohen to account for taxes and a bonus.

Testimony also revealed an Oval Office meeting Trump held with Cohen to discuss the repayment scheme, and evidence included nine checks bearing Trump’s personal signature.

Former U.S President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he leaves court for the day at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 18, 2024 in New York City (Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. presidents enjoy full immunity from criminal charges for their official “core constitutional” acts, but no immunity for unofficial acts, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, sending former President Donald Trump’s case back to the lower courts.

The justices left open the question of how far official acts can reach, possibly reshaping the contours of the American presidency.

Trump escalated his immunity claim to the nation’s highest bench after two lower courts denied his request for protection from federal criminal charges alleging he schemed to overturn the 2020 presidential results.

The decision about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s actions while in office likely closes the door to any chance that Trump’s election subversion case could go to trial before Election Day.

The justices took up the case in February but did not hear oral arguments until April 25.

U.S. Supreme Court ruling on obstruction law helps cases of Jan. 6 defendants

The trial court must now grapple with whether Trump’s alleged conduct to spread false information about the 2020 election results and conspiring to overturn them qualified as official presidential action.

In a 6-3 opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the president is subject to criminal prosecution for unofficial acts, “like everyone else.”

“But unlike anyone else, the President is a branch of government, and the Constitution vests in him sweeping powers and duties,” Roberts wrote. “Accounting for that reality—and ensuring that the President may exercise those powers forcefully, as the Framers anticipated he would—does not place him above the law; it preserves the basic structure of the Constitution.”

The Supreme Court held that Trump’s conversations with Department of Justice officials regarding the election results were official but left unanswered questions about other conduct named in Department of Justice special counsel Jack’s Smith indictment of Trump.

“​​Certain allegations—such as those involving Trump’s discussions with the Acting Attorney General—are readily categorized in light of the nature of the President’s official relationship to the office held by that individual,” the opinion reads. “Other allegations— such as those involving Trump’s interactions with the Vice President, state officials, and certain private parties, and his comments to the general public—present more difficult questions.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the decision makes the president “immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate criminal law.”

“If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop,” Sotomayor wrote. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Trump claimed in court filings that he could not be prosecuted for actions he took while still in office. His legal team also argues that former presidents cannot be tried in the court of law unless they are first impeached by the U.S. House and convicted by the Senate.

The indictment, which a federal grand jury handed up in August 2023, alleges Trump knowingly spread falsehoods to his supporters, plotting with co-conspirators to overturn results in seven states and eventually working his base into a frenzy that culminated in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress was to certify electoral votes.

DOJ’s Smith charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Thousands of former President Donald Trump’s supporters storm the U.S. Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A former Pennsylvania police officer who joined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that delayed the certification of the 2020 presidential election results cannot be charged with obstructing an official proceeding unless a lower court finds otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The ruling throws into question the cases of potentially hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants who faced the same charge, as well as a portion of Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment alleging former President Donald Trump schemed to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In a 6-3 opinion, the justices, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote that the subsection in question of an early 2000s obstruction law can only be applied to tampering with physical records.

“To prove a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so,” Roberts wrote.

“The judgment of the D. C. Circuit is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a concurring opinion.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented.

Impact on Jan. 6 defendants, Trump

The ruling has the potential to affect more than 355 Jan. 6 defendants who were charged with the same felony statute, which carries a fine and not more than 20 years in prison.

Dozens, including leaders of the extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have already been sentenced on the charge, according to the Department of Justice.

The case, Fischer v. United States, centered on whether Jan. 6 defendant Joseph W. Fischer broke the obstruction law when he joined the mob that breached the U.S. Capitol and delayed Congress, and Vice President Mike Pence, from certifying the 2020 presidential election results that declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner.

Trump also faces the obstruction charge as part of his four-count federal indictment that alleges he worked with others to overturn the election results in seven states, pressured Pence to join him and whipped his base into a frenzy that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack.

Trump will almost certainly challenge the charge, as his legal team has already argued he is completely immune to it.

The obstruction provision examined by the high court is contained in section 1512 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted after the 2001 Enron accounting scandal.

The provision targets “whoever corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

Physical evidence

Significant time during April’s oral arguments centered on whether the second portion of the statute hinged on the first clause, meaning the law could only be applied if physical evidence was involved.

The government argued the two parts are separate and that Fischer, who sent texts leading up to the riot and is shown on police camera footage inside the Capitol, intended to disrupt an official proceeding of Congress.

Fischer’s team argued that he didn’t actually enter the Capitol until Congress had already paused the proceeding, and that he didn’t stay very long.

A lower federal court agreed last year with Fischer’s motion to dismiss the felony charge.

A federal appeals panel in Washington, D.C., did not. Judge Florence Y. Pan — who also sat on the panel in Trump’s presidential immunity appeal — wrote in the lead opinion that the statute is “unambiguous” in its meaning of what constitutes obstructing an official proceeding.

The obstruction charge is not the only count brought against Fischer after his participation in the Jan. 6 riot.

The original indictment against him also included charges of civil disorder, assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, talks with Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on an episode of Brietbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot at Quicken Loans Arena on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio (Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM).

The right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit is accused of abusing the bankruptcy process to escape accountability in defamation lawsuits stemming from its false claims about the 2020 election. 

Gateway Pundit, founded in St. Louis by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, filed for bankruptcy in April as it was facing defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado.

In 2021, Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss sued Gateway Pundit in St. Louis after the site published debunked stories accusing them of election fraud that resulted in threats of violence, many tinged with racial slurs. Former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer sued the site in Colorado in 2020 after it falsely accused him of being part of an effort to overturn the presidential election.

Lawyers for Freeman, Moss and Coomer this week asked a Florida judge to dismiss the bankruptcy filing, calling it a “pure litigation tactic” designed to derail their lawsuits. 

Hoft has previously been accused of purposely delaying discovery in the Missouri case to impede a jury trial. That, Freeman and Moss’ attorney contends, is the true purpose of the bankruptcy.

“To date, the defendants’ strategy in the Missouri litigation has had one goal: delay,” wrote David Blanksy, Freeman and Moss’ attorney. “This chapter 11 filing is just the newest effort — in a long line of failed tactics — to prevent (plaintiffs) from proving their claims in a court of law.”

Rudy Giuliani lawyer shifts blame to St. Louis-based Gateway Pundit in defamation case

Vincent Alexander, Coomer’s attorney, wrote that the bankruptcy filing came just as the Hoft brothers were served with deposition notices in Missouri and soon after their motion to dismiss the Colorado lawsuit was denied. 

Hoft announced in April that his company was filing for bankruptcy because of “the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet.” His attorney, Bart Houston, argues in court filings that the benefit of bankruptcy is “to consolidate disparate claims into a single forum for equality of treatment and distribution.”

Gateway Pundit’s insurance policy, Houston wrote, isn’t large enough to cover all the expenses needed for two defamation cases.

“In this case, whichever one of the two pending litigations that reaches trial first will likely have depleted the policy and will get first shot at the remaining assets of the debtor,” Houston wrote. “The second place litigation will be left with nothing but a pyrrhic victory.”

If the plaintiffs in the defamation lawsuits are “dead set on depletion of the insurance policy, destruction of the debtors business operations and zero payment on account of their claims, then such a result will certainly occur in a dismissal or stay relief,” Houston wrote. 

The legal wrangling over bankruptcy echoes the fight between Infowars host Alex Jones and the families of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

A Texas judge ruled last year that Jones can’t use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1 billion to families who sued over his repeated lies that the school massacre was a hoax. But the bankruptcy filings continue to forestall efforts to get damages, with one family trying to collect assets from Jones’ company in a way that other families argue could leave them with next to nothing.

Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin, cannot move forward because it shields members of the Sackler family, which principally owns the company, from liability for opioid-related claims.

‘Patient zero’

According to Business Insider, Jim Hoft admitted at a June 17 hearing in the bankruptcy case that he used the company to give himself an $800,000 loan to purchase a condo in 2021 in Jensen Beach, Florida. 

According to court filings, none of that loan has been repaid. 

Gateway Pundit, doing business as TGP Communications LLC, also owns a 2021 Porsche Cayenne worth about $54,000. Hoft said during the hearing he has used it as a “company car.” 

Hoft receives a salary from the company of $17,000 a month.

In the nearly two decades since its founding, Gateway Pundit has spread false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Sandy Hook school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. 

After years of existing largely in the fringes of the right-wing media ecosphere, its profile exploded under Trump, who granted the site White House press credentials. 

Hoft was allowed in 2022 to join a lawsuit filed by the Missouri attorney general’s office that argued the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online. Then Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who now serves in the U.S. Senate, argued at the time that Hoft was “one of the most influential online voices in the country” who suffered “extensive government-induced censorship” over issues like COVID-19 and election security.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the lawsuit’s claims, concluding that neither Hoft nor any of the other plaintiffs were able to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion.  They also failed to demonstrate any harm, the court determined, or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.

In addition to their defamation lawsuit against Hoft, Freeman and Moss sued former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani over false allegations of fraud tied to the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani’s attorney tried to distance his client from the violent threats against the Georgia election workers by arguing Gateway Pundit was more responsible, calling the site “patient zero” in spreading the conspiracy theory.

In December, Giuliani was ordered to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million in damages.

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (Jane Norman/States Newsroom).

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a precedent Friday that had for decades limited judicial power to strike executive branch regulations, in a decision immediately criticized for potentially undermining decisions by scientists and agency experts.

The 6-3 and 6-2 decisions in two cases brought by fishing operators in New Jersey and Rhode Island challenged a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule and overturned the principle known as Chevron deference.

That precedent gave federal agencies broad discretion to use their judgment to resolve any ambiguity Congress left in a federal statute.

The court’s six conservatives reasoned that courts “routinely confront statutory ambiguities” that have nothing to do with the authority of regulatory agencies.

“Of course, when faced with a statutory ambiguity in such a case, the ambiguity is not a delegation to anybody, and a court is not somehow relieved of its obligation to independently interpret the statute,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Under the 40-year-old precedent, courts gave up their interpretive role and deferred to agencies, Roberts wrote.

But they shouldn’t, he added. Judges should apply their own legal reasoning to reach a sound decision.

“Courts instead understand that such statutes, no matter how impenetrable, do —  in fact, must — have a single, best meaning.”

The decision overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that said courts must defer to federal agencies’ expertise when considering legal challenges to a rule. The 1984 ruling significantly raised the bar for overturning an agency rule.

The precedent strengthened the executive branch under presidential administrations of both parties, but experts worry its reversal will strip agencies of the power to enact regulatory safeguards across a broad spectrum of issues including clean air and public health.

In a dissenting opinion, the court’s three liberals — not including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in one of the cases, after she recused herself because she’d heard the case as an appeals court judge before joining the Supreme Court — said the majority erred by misunderstanding the roles of three branches of government.

Congress knows it cannot “write perfectly complete regulatory statutes,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote. Interpretation of those statutes is a given, and Congress usually prefers a “responsible agency” instead of a court.

Agencies are more politically accountable and have greater technical expertise in a given issue than courts, she wrote.

“Put all that together and deference to the agency is the almost obvious choice,” Kagan wrote.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

The Cole County Courthouse in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

Attorneys representing transgender minors and health care providers squabbled with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office Wednesday over thousands of documents both sides say are being wrongfully withheld.

At its core, the case seeks to determine whether the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is lawful. The lawsuit was filed by the families of three transgender minors, Southampton Healthcare, two of Southampton’s providers and two national advocacy organizations, saying the ban could have “extremely serious, negative health consequences” for transgender youth.

The attorney general filed a counterclaim alleging Southampton Healthcare, which provides gender-affirming care, did not fully disclose risks when treating transgender youth.

A trial is scheduled for late September, and attorneys are in the process of deposing witnesses. The deadline to send responsive documents to the other party passed, but both plaintiffs and defendants were unhappy with how much the other side has willingly turned over. 

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is stepping into Cole County Circuit Court for this case, said it would take time to rule on each exception the parties found to requests for discovery.

Jim Lawrence, an attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that the state has withheld documents citing exceptions not backed by state law.

Lawrence told the judge the parties would “be here until next week” if he were to explain every document he is requesting. He displayed a powerpoint with a chart of the objections from the attorney general’s office and the corresponding evidentiary requests.

Peter Donahue, assistant attorney general for special litigation, said the state went through a “burdensome” process of reviewing 100,000 documents that matched search terms in investigatory requests and spent $25,000 taking the time to narrow the lot to what is relevant and not deemed protected — which ended up being 2.6% of those files.

“If the state reviewed 100,000 (documents) and only 2,600 are relevant… That is an impossible fact to digest,” Lawrence said. “That doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Included in the state’s objections were documents protected by “gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence said. This impacted almost half of the requests for production issued to the office of Gov. Mike Parson.

Gubernatorial privilege, Lawrence argued, doesn’t exist. He said there isn’t legal precedent in Missouri for it.

The idea of an executive privilege was discussed during the attorney general’s investigation of former Gov. Eric Greitens, with many dismissing the excuse as illegitimate.

“They are asking you to be the first court in the state of Missouri to declare gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence told the judge.

Donahue said he hadn’t seen the privilege successfully invoked in Missouri, but it was “widely recognized across the nation.”

“We are just talking about communications between the governor and his close circle,” Donahue said. “This is not a unique concept in the gubernatorial process.”

Carter asked what types of documents have been withheld from discovery under gubernatorial privilege. Lawrence listed off a handful of examples, including “policies and procedures related to enforcement of the act.”

“Even if (gubernatorial privilege) does exist, it wouldn’t apply to all that,” he said.

Donahue said the objection was an “add-on privilege” for some of the documents, where another exception would have already protected the information from disclosure.

Lawrence tossed an arm up at the admission, then folding his arms and furrowing his brow.

“His argument really goes to why we are here today,” he said. “If you are asserting a privilege and withholding information based upon a privilege, you have to put that.”

It is written in the privilege log, Donahue said. A privilege log is a file that describes the documents withheld and the privileges asserted to protect them.

Lawrence also took issue with claims of attorney-client privilege that protected Jamie Reed, a witness in the case and whistleblower following her work at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Reed’s affidavit alleging quick “medicalization” of transgender minors launched the attorney general’s investigation of gender-affirming care and was a main talking point when lawmakers discussed a ban for minors.

The attorney general isn’t Reed’s lawyer, Lawrence said, so his office shouldn’t argue attorney-client privilege for documents related to her.

Plaintiffs subpoenaed Reed separately and received a letter she sent to the attorney general. That letter should have also been sent by the attorney general’s office responsive to the investigative requests, but plaintiffs didn’t get it, Lawrence said.

Other exceptions include external communications allegedly withheld as work product and many documents sealed under investigative privilege.

Lawrence said they did not receive the responses the public gave to a tip line the attorney general opened to report complaints about gender-affirming care, but that information was compiled for outside sources. Indeed, St. Louis Public Radio requested the responses in a Sunshine Request and received the compilation a year later.

Donahue also argued Southampton was withholding documents. He said he received informational pamphlets from Southampton but wanted medical records of four or five patients that received gender-affirming care as minors.

Planned Parenthood vows to fight Missouri AG push for transgender youth medical records

The judge questioned why he needed these particular documents.

“These documents are relevant to our counterclaim that plaintiffs have been inaccurate about the types of harm that can come from these treatments,” Donahue said. 

He argued gender-affirming care providers weren’t always truthful — a claim patients have disputed when their care is questioned.

“It essentially amounts to snake-oil salesmanship, if true,” he said.

He wanted to get access to records showing what doctors have discussed with patients and letters of support from mental-health professionals, which he said sometimes have “irregularities.”

Complaints from the attorney general’s office about these letters have led to the investigations of 57 health professionals, putting their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 cases were open in the probe by the Department of Professional Registration.

Jason Orr, another attorney representing plaintiffs, said the state may ask Southampton’s physicians questions but can’t ask for patients’ private records.

“Southampton does not have the ability to waive their doctor-patient privilege, and in fact, they are required to exercise it on their behalf,” he said.

There are currently four cases open between healthcare providers and the attorney general where providers are fighting requests to hand over medical records.

Southampton’s patients are not the plaintiffs in the case at hand, Orr said.

Plaintiffs PFLAG and GLMA, two advocacy organizations, have not been complying with requests for documents, Donahue argued.

He said he hasn’t received anything from the two organizations, despite the deadline already passing.

Orr said the request led to 20,000 documents that attorneys are “working in good faith” to narrow down and deliver. He hoped for it to be ready by the end of the week, complaining that the request was sent one month before the deadline.

“This was an issue that was created in part by defendants’ timing,” he said.

At the start of the hearing Wednesday, Solicitor General Josh Divine mentioned a federal case that may change their proceedings.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case on Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

There are additional claims in the case before Carter, Orr said.

Carter said to keep him updated if the case will be affected.

“We’re going to keep marching on until we hear something different,” he said.

Half of U.S. states have a restriction on gender-affirming care for minors, with litigation blocking some states’ bans.

A lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana alleged the federal government pressured social media companies to target conservative speech across a range of topics, from the efficacy of vaccines to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected arguments by Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court held that neither the states nor seven individuals who were co-plaintiffs in the case were able to demonstrate any harm or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.

Therefore, they do not have legal standing to bring a case against the federal government.

Plaintiffs failed to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion, Barrett wrote, rather than their own judgment and policies. In fact, she wrote, social media platforms “began to suppress the plaintiffs’ COVID–19 content before the defendants’ challenged communications started.”

Plaintiffs cannot “manufacture standing,” Barrett wrote, “merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.”

The ruling overturns a lower court decision that concluded officials under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove deceptive or inaccurate content out of fears it would fuel vaccine hesitancy or upend elections.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who inherited the lawsuit from his predecessor, has called the federal government’s actions “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history.”

Suit alleging suppression of free speech met with skepticism at U.S. Supreme Court

But those arguments were greeted with skepticism by the court in March, with justices from across the ideological spectrum punching holes in the lawsuit and raising concerns about the consequences for public safety and national security.

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the government’s actions in this case were not ” ham-handed censorship” that the court has routinely rejected, but they were coercive and illegal all the same.

“It was blatantly unconstitutional,” he wrote, “and the country may come to regret the court’s failure to say so… If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this court should send.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill released a statement on social media calling Wednesday’s ruling “unfortunate and disappointing.”

“A majority of the Supreme Court gives a free pass to the federal government to threaten tech platforms into censorship and suppression of speech that is indisputably protected by the First Amendment,” Murril said. “The majority waves off the worst government coercion scheme in history.”

In an emailed statement, Bailey made no mention of the court’s decision to dismiss the case, instead declaring that his office will continue to pursue evidence of social media censorship by the federal government.

“Missouri is not done,” Bailey said. “We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise once and for all.”

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who either were banned from a platform or whose posts were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and X, then known as Twitter.

Among the co-plaintiffs is Jim Hoft, founder of the St. Louis-based right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft has built a career on promulgating false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

His company recently filed for bankruptcy as it faces defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado filed by people who say they faced threats after being vilified by Gateway Pundit in false stories.

During appeals court arguments last year, the attorneys general specifically cited Hoft, claiming that he is “currently subjected to an ongoing campaign by federal officials to target the content on his website.”

Hoft claims claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story at the urging of the federal government. But Barrett wrote that Twitter acted according to its own rules against posting or sharing “privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.”

There is no evidence, Barrett wrote, that Twitter adopted its policy in response to pressure from the federal government.

Benjamin Aguiñaga, the solicitor general for the Louisiana attorney general, argued before the court in March that the government has no right to try to persuade social media platforms to violate Americans’ constitutional rights, “and pressuring platforms in back rooms shielded from public view is not using the bully pulpit at all. That is just being a bully.”

Emails obtained as part of the lawsuit, Aguiñaga argued, show the government badgered platforms behind closed doors, abused them with profanity and “ominously says that the White House is considering its options… all to get the platforms to censor more speech.”

“Under this onslaught,” he said, “the platforms routinely cave.”

The federal government, represented by Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general, argued Aguiñaga’s accusations simply don’t hold water. 

There is no evidence that decisions by social media companies to remove or deprioritize content can be attributed to the government. Instead, Fletcher argued, the companies made their own decisions relying on their own content moderation policies.

There was no coercion or attempted intimidation, Fletcher said, and the best proof is that social media companies “routinely said ‘no’ to the government.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speaks with families at the Mattie Rhodes Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in September (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday blocked the full implementation of a student-loan forgiveness program proposed by the Biden administration that was set to launch July 1.

The SAVE Plan, an acronym for Saving on a Valuable Education, has been partially rolled out. The provisions already in effect may remain, United States District Court for the District of Kansas Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled Monday. But elements set for July 1, like reducing payments to 5% of borrowers’ income instead of 10%, are on hold while litigation challenging the program moves forward.

A separate ruling out of the Eastern District of Missouri will block only loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan offered forgiveness for those who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for more than 10 years, with an additional year for each $1,000 additional borrowed.

Both judges wrote that the SAVE Plan, which uses the Higher Education Act to authorize approximately $475 billion in loan forgiveness, is beyond the law’s legislative intent.

“The court is not free to replace the language of the statute with unenacted legislative intent. Congress has made it clear under what circumstances loan forgiveness is permitted, and the (income-contingent repayment) plan is not one of those circumstances,” United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri John Ross wrote.

The rulings are the result of lawsuits filed by two coalitions of attorneys general: one led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and the other by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, representing a combined 18 states.

Crabtree dismissed eight of the 11 states represented in Kobach’s lawsuit earlier this month, finding that Alaska is the only state that can claim harm in Monday’s ruling over “$100,000 in lost (federal family education) loan interest over two years.”

Ross determined that Missouri, through quasi-governmental loan servicer MOHELA, has standing. MOHELA, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, gave Bailey standing in a U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned an earlier version of loan forgiveness last year.

Ross wrote that the allegations of harm to MOHELA are “substantially similar to, if not identical to,” those argued in last year’s Supreme Court case.

MOHELA has routinely distanced itself from Bailey’s litigation against loan forgiveness.

Bailey, in a press release, lauded the Missouri ruling as a win for Missourians without large amounts of student-loan debt.

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the president,” he wrote in a statement. “Today’s ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else’s debt.”

Kobach also emphasized the judge’s ruling of a lack of Congressional authorization in the SAVE Plan.

“Kansas’s victory today is a victory for the entire country,” he said. “As the court correctly held, whether to forgive billions of dollars of student debt is a major question that only Congress can answer. Biden’s administration is attempting to usurp Congress’s authority. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s unfair. ”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the Department of Justice “will continue to vigorously defend the SAVE Plan.”

“We designed SAVE to cut undergraduate loan payments in half, avoid interest growth for borrowers making zero-dollar or low payments, and allow at-risk borrowers to reach forgiveness faster,” he wrote in a statement. “Under SAVE, nearly 8 million Americans — one out of five borrowers — have breathing room from bills that, too often, compete with basic needs.” 

Cardona said Republican elected officials are trying to block the plan “even though the department has relied on the authority under the Higher Education Act three times over the last 30 years to implement income-driven repayment plans.”

He promised a continued push from the federal government for student-loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan is the department’s second iteration of forgiveness, of which three have been announced. Bailey and Kobach wrote a letter to Cardona in May with “significant concerns” about the latest plan, which has yet to be implemented.

A judge declined to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Andrew Bailey against Planned Parenthood Great Plains based on a Project Veritas video (Photo by Michael Thomas/Getty Images).

A lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey accusing Planned Parenthood of transporting minors out of state for abortions will move forward, a judge ruled Tuesday evening.

The lawsuit is based on conversations between Planned Parenthood staff and a man with Project Veritas who secretly filmed the staff while inquiring about an abortion for his fake 13-year-old niece. 

Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which runs the Kansas City area clinic where the video was taken, asked that the judge dismiss the lawsuit shortly after it was filed. 

“We’re reviewing all our options and will continue to vigorously defend this case based on hypotheticals and fictitious patients,” Erin Thompson, general counsel with Planned Parenthood Great Plain, said in a statement Wednesday.

At a hearing in early June, John Andrew Hirth, an attorney for Planned Parenthood, said there was no proof the Kansas City area clinic broke the law.

“There’s no allegation that any abortion has been performed either in Missouri or outside of Missouri, with or without parental consent here,” Hirth said. “The whole conversation is hypothetical.”

But Boone County Judge Brouck Jacobs found merit for moving forward with the case. He did not issue an opinion along with his ruling explaining his reasoning.

“This is the beginning of the end for Planned Parenthood in the State of Missouri,” Bailey said in a statement Tuesday following the ruling.

Missouri Planned Parenthood clinics remain ‘open to all’ despite new Medicaid restrictions

The video, captured in December, was posted on social media by Project Veritas, a self-proclaimed right wing news organization that often conducts undercover stings. 

The man filming in the clinic told staff that the made-up girl’s parents couldn’t know about the abortion. Staff then directed him to their affiliate clinics in Kansas where they said he could “bypass” parental consent.  When the man asked how often girls go out of state for abortions, the Planned Parenthood employee said it happens “every day.”

Kathryn Monroe, who represented the attorney general’s office at the hearing, said while the man’s questions were hypothetical, the employee at Planned Parenthood thought the situation was real. 

“There was admitted conduct about what they would do in this actual situation,” she said.

The attorney general’s office in its arguments before the court pointed to Missouri law which states: “No one shall intentionally cause aid or assist a minor to obtain an abortion.” 

That law was written before the state’s trigger law went into place in June 2022, effectively making all abortions — with the exception of life-threatening situations — illegal.

Missouri doesn’t have explicit laws requiring parental consent for minors getting abortions in other states, nor does it prohibit minors from going to other states to get abortions.

Kansas law requires physicians to either obtain parental consent or to go through the judicial bypass process where a judge can authorize a minor to get an abortion without parental consent.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Great Plains said in February that they do not provide any form of transportation directly to any patients, regardless of age or where they live.

Darrell McClanahan of Milo, a candidate for governor who the Missouri Republican Party attempted to remove from the ballot for being an 'honorary' KKK member. He is shown in a photo from his 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate, standing in front of the flag of the Missouri State Guard, a military force formed in 1861 to oppose the Union in the Civil War (Campaign photo).

The Missouri Republican Party is continuing its effort to remove an “honorary KKK member” from the primary ballot for governor, but his attorney says the move comes too late and the party should know it.

On May 17, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker ruled that Darrell McClanahan III of Milo would remain on the ballot for the GOP nomination for governor. The party’s attorney, Lowell Pearson of Jefferson City, filed a notice of appeal Monday with the Western District Court of Appeals seeking to reverse that decision.

McClanahan, who is listed first on the ballot among nine candidates, is not running a full-scale campaign. He has not organized a committee to raise and spend money on his behalf. Only three contenders – state Sen. Bill Eigel, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe – are running full-scale campaigns, raising and spending millions and traveling extensively.

The appeal is too late, said David Roland, McClanahan’s attorney. Ashcroft certified the list of state candidates and issues on the ballot on June 11 and under state law the courts cannot “order an individual or issue be placed on the ballot less than eight weeks before the date of the election.”

Roland filed a motion seeking to dismiss the appeal and impose sanctions for a frivolous court action.

GOP candidates will remain on Vernon County ballot pending review by Missouri appeals court

“There is literally no way that their appeal could succeed,” Roland said in an interview with The Independent. “They were only asking for one thing in their petition, and that was an injunction to prevent his name from being certified for the ballot. That ship sailed back in May when the secretary of state did exactly what the law required him to do, certifying the name for the ballot.”

Pearson declined to comment on the appeal or Roland’s filing. 

The state party doesn’t want McClanahan on the ballot because he admitted being an “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. McClanahan also faces felony property damage and stealing charges in a case being heard in Wright County.

The state Republican Party sued Ashcroft to remove McClanahan, but Walker wrote that by accepting his $500 filing fee, the party was stuck with him. McClanahan was a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022 and his views were known, Walker wrote.

The Republican Party “is a sophisticated entity and the record shows that it was not only aware of a party’s authority to reject a filing fee offered by a candidate,” Walker wrote, “but that segments of the Missouri Republican Party have already adopted a policy of rejecting filing fees from any candidate who has not completed a prescribed vetting process.”

A case from Vernon County, testing whether a political party can reject a filing fee paid at the county clerk’s office to keep a candidate off the ballot, is set for a hearing June 25 before the Western District Court of Appeals.

The Vernon County case was decided May 8 and the appeal began immediately. The appeals court stayed the ruling of the trial court that removed the candidates and set up an expedited process that will test whether the court has authority to act.

The state Republican Party didn’t seek to expedite the case at trial in Cole County and let the ruling become final in the regular legal schedule, Roland wrote in his brief asking the court to dismiss the appeal.

As a major political party, Roland wrote, the GOP “is a sophisticated party well versed in this State’s election laws.”

And Pearson, he wrote, is a “highly respected attorney who is experienced in litigating under this state’s election laws.”

With no ability to provide the relief being sought, Roland wrote, the appeal wastes the court’s time.

“An appeal that presents no justiciable question and is obviously devoid of merit is frivolous,” he wrote.

Because the party didn’t seek to speed up the case or the appeal, Roland said, the court would be unlikely to rule before the primary. No transcript of circuit court proceedings has been requested and the case file has not been prepared, he noted.

“If they were serious about it, they should have already had the transcript prepared,” Roland said. “They should have gone ahead and filed the legal file today alongside their notice of appeal. That is the only possible way they were going to get this case heard before the election.”

Advocates with PROMO and Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri rally outside of the St. Louis Civil Courts building Monday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

ST. LOUIS — A circuit court judge heard arguments Monday over whether the Missouri attorney general’s efforts to access medical records of transgender youth violate privacy protections.

Monday’s hearing was convened at the request of Bailey in the hopes that the court would amend a previous order that requires patients to waive HIPAA rights before their medical records could be shared. If they don’t waive HIPAA, their documents would be exempt from the attorney general’s request for medical records.

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects patients from their providers disclosing their personally identifiable health information.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte did not immediately rule following the hearing. Richard Muniz, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said if the decision is unfavorable, his organization will appeal.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

“Our commitment to our patients is that we will fight this as long as we need to,” Muniz told The Independent. “Today, we’ve already signaled that we are going to appeal because we think that we shouldn’t have to turn over documents, especially patient records, but we shouldn’t have to partake in this investigation at all.”

Bailey launched his investigation in March 2023 looking into gender-affirming care of minors after the affidavit of Jamie Reed, who worked at Washington University’s adolescent Transgender Center. In April, another circuit court judge ruled that Bailey may continue his investigation — adding that patients must waive HIPAA rights before their private health information could be shared.

Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Washington University and Planned Parenthood Great Plains are also arguing against the attorney general’s civil investigative demands.

The April decision, beyond giving patients the ability to protect their medical records, granted Bailey power to investigate Planned Parenthood under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, a state law that allows the attorney general’s office to investigate deceptive marketing practices.

Matthew Eddy, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood said during his arguments Monday that the attorney general’s authority under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act has yet to be fully litigated.

Health care providers are fearful of what the attorney general might do with more information. Prior reporting by The Independent revealed Bailey’s use of the Division of Professional Registration, which is investigating therapists as a result of a complaint from his office.

After the attorney general’s office received a list of minor patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center and other documents, therapists and social workers that had written letters of support for patients to go to the Transgender Center had their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 of 57 cases were still open.

Hearing

Deputy Solicitor General Sam Freeland, representing the attorney general, argued Monday that a federal regulation allows medical records to be released when ordered by the court. He told the judge this exception was “not discussed by the plaintiff.”

“HIPAA has not barred the disclosure of the documents in question,” Freeland argued.

He said Planned Parenthood had the burden of proof to show that HIPAA covers the documents.

Eddy this was “simply not correct.”

“Planned Parenthood has proven the general rule that HIPAA protects disclosure,” he said. “The burden is on the respondent to show that the exception applies.”

Eddy further attacked the premise of Bailey’s investigation, which Freeland argued was not on the table Monday.

He said the attorney general’s civil investigative demands, which Eddy said were titled as an investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center, “had no allegations as to Planned Parenthood’s conduct.”

“He can’t point to a single complaint from a patient, a patient’s parent,” Eddy said.

Eddy said the attorney general “had 54 incredibly broad requests for information.”

“Included in the requests are information that would be deeply sensitive to transgender minors,” he told the judge.

Muniz told reporters one of the requests was for “any document that mentions TikTok,” calling the investigation a “sprawling phishing expedition.”

In press releases, Bailey has expressed a belief that all gender-affirming medical providers are connected.

“I launched this investigation to obtain the truth about how this clandestine network of clinics subjected children to puberty blockers and irreversible surgery, often without parental consent,” he said in a statement following the hearing Monday. “We are moving forward undeterred with our investigation into Planned Parenthood. I will not stop until all bad actors are held accountable.”

Muniz said Planned Parenthood does not have a formal relationship with Washington University, which was the focus of Reed’s affidavit and the beginning of Bailey’s investigation.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood rallied before the hearing, calling the investigation a political attack.

“(Bailey) only wants (the records) so he can politicize gender affirming care and to put a target on transgender and gender-non-conforming patients,” Margot Riphagen, Planned Parenthood St. Louis’s vice president of external affairs, said during the rally.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, called the attorney general’s actions “scary.”

“He has pushed credentialing committees of social workers, professional counselors and family and marital therapists to investigate every single provider on the eastern side of the state that has offered a letter of support for a trans or gender expansive kid to receive care,” she said, referencing a Division of Professional Registration investigation that stemmed from the AG’s complaint.

Around 40 people attended the rally, filling the courtroom until a small group were standing in the back. Most wore t-shirts with phrases like “protect trans kids” or “I fight with Planned Parenthood” and filed into the seats behind Planned Parenthood’s lawyers before sitting on the opposing side.

“Thank you,” a few people told Eddy as they walked out of the St. Louis courtroom.

Students hold up anti-abortion signs at the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s near-total abortion ban does not fly in the face of the state constitution’s separation of church and state, a St. Louis judge determined. 

The ruling came Friday, several days shy of the 2-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the constitutional right to an abortion and paved the way for Missouri to become the first state to ban the procedure. 

Last year, 14 Missouri clergy members across seven denominations sued the state, alleging the ban violated Missouri’s strict separation of church and state. They demanded that the abortion ban be lifted. 

The clergy members in their initial complaint took issue with state law which says “life begins at conception,” arguing that lawmakers “weaponized their religious beliefs” in a way that not every religion or religious person agrees with. 

But in a 44-page ruling that delved into the state’s abortion restrictions dating back to 1825, St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser decided the state had not erred and dismissed the lawsuit.

“While the determination that life begins at conception may run counter to some religious beliefs,” he wrote, “it is not itself necessarily a religious belief.”

The ruling

In 2019, while debating what would become the state’s “trigger law,” many Missouri lawmakers called on their faith as their guide in supporting the legislation. 

That included then-state Rep. Nick Schroer, who co-sponsored the legislation dubbed the “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act.” Schroer, who is now a state senator, said at the time that his Catholic faith instructed his decision to file the bill.

His bill ultimately passed, making it possible for Missouri to outlaw abortion in June 2022, when laws around abortion were returned to state leaders’ hands. Now in Missouri, abortions are only legal in emergency situations “to avert the death of the pregnant woman or for which a delay will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”

Health care providers who perform abortions not necessary to save the woman’s life can be charged with a class B felony, which means up to 15 years in prison. Their medical license can also be suspended or revoked as a result.  

‘No protection’: Missouri advocates sound alarm after IVF safeguards stymied in legislature

“By legislating that life begins at ‘conception,’ the Missouri legislature dictates a narrowly Christian perspective onto all of Missouri’s diverse faith communities,” the lawsuit reads. 

The clergy members pointed to a different part of the state constitution when making their argument. Specifically a section that reads: “The state shall not coerce any person to participate in any prayer or other religious activity.”

Sengheiser disagreed with their assertion that the “trigger law” is unconstitutional on these merits.

“The intent of the Missouri legislature has become increasingly couched in religious language,” the judge wrote. But he added that lawmakers have also made “extremely detailed medical and scientific findings” in state law based on increased knowledge of fetal development. 

Clergy members share abortion stories

At least three clergy members who filed the suit have previously had abortions. 

Among them is the Rev. Cynthia Bumb, of the United Church of Christ in St. Louis, who had a surgical abortion in 1993 in Missouri at 12 weeks pregnant after she learned the fetus was nonviable. 

And Rabbi Susan Talve, of Central Reform Congregation of St. Louis, who had an abortion in 1973 in New York City when she was 19, a choice she wrote she was “immensely relieved” to have. 

The lawsuit also included the story of the Rev. Barbara Phifer, a United Methodist minister in St. Louis County, in which she told her own story of needing an abortion in Missouri in 1978. 

She wrote that while she was in seminary, she experienced a miscarriage in which the fetus didn’t pass naturally. Phiger said it took her five weeks to be admitted into a Missouri hospital to receive a surgical abortion, during which time she said she could have died.

Now a Democratic state representative and candidate for secretary of state, Phifer said she often counsels families who ask her advice on whether to have an abortion. She said she encourages them to consider factors such as their finances, emotional resources and health. 

Phifer in the suit wrote that she believes current state laws “remove the decision-making capacity from pregnant people, which conflicts with her belief that all people are made in God’s image as autonomous beings with equal capacity to direct their lives.”

No ruling on TRAP laws

The lawsuit also asked the court to dismantle a series of TRAP laws put into place in the years leading up to the state’s near-total abortion ban. These “targeted regulation of abortion providers” laws impaired abortion access across the state until only one abortion clinic remained in Missouri by 2019.

The clergy members argued the following TRAP laws were also in violation of the separation of church and state: A mandatory 72 hour waiting period between an appointment to inquire about an abortion and the actual procedure, which must be done by the same physician seen initially and a state-mandated pamphlet given to patients that states abortions “terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

Sengheiser ruled the argument against TRAP laws was no longer ripe, since the abortion ban essentially negated the need for any of those laws to be enforced. 

The clergy members in a statement Friday said they are considering whether to appeal.

A 7.62X39mm round sits next a a 30-round magazine and an AK-47 with a bump stock installed at Good Guys Gun and Range in Orem, Utah, on Feb. 21, 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a 2018 rule to ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire at a rapid rate similar to fully automatic guns. (George Frey/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule enacted following a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that defined a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock attachment as a machine gun, which is generally prohibited under federal law.

The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, reduces the executive branch’s already-limited ability to address gun violence. Thomas, a strong defender of Second Amendment gun rights, wrote that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its statutory authority in prohibiting the sale and possession of bump stocks, which he said differed importantly from machine guns.

“Nothing changes when a semiautomatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock,” Thomas wrote. “Between every shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before reengaging the trigger for another shot.”

The case, Garland v. Cargill, was a 6-3 decision that broke along the court’s established ideological lines.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior member of the court’s liberal wing, wrote the dissent, and argued that the decision puts “bump stocks back in civilian hands.”

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she wrote. “A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”

Gun safety setback

The White House slammed the decision.

“Today’s decision strikes down an important gun safety regulation,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation.”

Biden called on Congress to ban bump stocks and assault weapons, but any gun-related legislation is likely to be stalled with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding only a slim majority in the Senate.

“Bump stocks have played a devastating role in many of the horrific mass shootings in our country, but sadly it’s no surprise to see the Supreme Court roll back this necessary public safety rule as they push their out of touch extreme agenda,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

Trump-era rule

This case stems from a regulation set during the Trump administration, following the mass shooting in Las Vegas. A gunman used rifles outfitted with bump stocks to fire into a crowd at a music festival, killing 58 people and injuring more than 500.

The next year, the ATF issued the rule that concluded bump stocks are illegal machine guns. Anyone who owned or possessed a bump stock was required to either destroy the material or turn it in to the agency to avoid criminal penalties.

Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner in Austin, Texas, surrendered two bump stocks to ATF and then challenged the rule in federal court.

A U.S. district court dismissed his case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with Cargill that a 1986 law’s definition of a machine gun does not apply to bump stocks because the rifles equipped with the attachments don’t shoot multiple bullets “automatically,” or “by a single function of the trigger.”

That law defined a machine gun as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Biden administration appealed the 5th Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court.

High court arguments

In oral arguments, the Biden administration defended the Trump-era rule and said that bump stocks allow semiautomatic rifles to fire automatically with a single pull of the trigger.

Attorneys for Cargill argued that bump stocks are used by repeatedly pulling the trigger, rather than firing automatically with a single pull.

In her dissent, Sotomayor said the decision will limit the federal government’s “efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”

Thomas also wrote a major gun decision in 2022 that invalidated a New York law against carrying a firearm in public without showing a special need for protection. The court decided the case on 14th Amendment grounds, but it also expanded Second Amendment rights.

Because of that 2022 decision, another gun related case is before the court this session that tests a federal law that prevents the possession of firearms by a person who is subject to a domestic violence protective order. A decision is expected this month.

Mifepristone, FDA-approved for pregnancy termination up to 10 weeks gestation, is used in about 63% of U.S. abortions. (Getty Images)

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling Thursday to maintain current access to the abortion medication mifepristone, rejecting a challenge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the drug, abortion-rights advocates and opponents vowed to continue their respective battles over the drug.

Mifepristone is one of two drugs used to treat miscarriages and terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester, and is the most common method of abortion in the U.S. Anti-abortion groups, in conjunction with conservative religious law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, sought to revert the FDA guidelines to 2016, when the prescribed gestational time frame was three weeks shorter and there were more requirements around who could prescribe it and where and when provider visits had to take place. The case made its way to the nation’s highest court after outspoken anti-abortion U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas ruled that mifepristone’s approval should be revoked, followed by a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that agreed in part, saying the restrictions should revert to pre-2016 rules.

In a unanimous decision, justices agreed that the case lacked standing, saying there was no clear injury to the plaintiffs to warrant reinstating the restrictions.

“The plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA is not requiring them to do or refrain from doing anything. Rather, the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion. “Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”

Wendy Heipt, attorney for advocacy organization Legal Voice, said the fact that the unanimous ruling is focused on standing is helpful, because that’s an area of law that has been in question in many reproductive rights-related cases since the Dobbs decision in 2022.

“I’m not relaxing; it’s not over. But the fact that this one rogue judge in Texas opened the courthouse doors to people who had no right to be there was a real challenge to the way our judicial system works, so I am reassured that there are still rules,” Heipt told States Newsroom.

Many reproductive rights and medical organizations issued statements following the ruling, including the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization that has closely tracked abortion pill use in the two years since the Dobbs decision.

“We are relieved by this outcome, but we are not celebrating,” said Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Institute, in a statement. “From the start, this case was rooted in bad faith and lacking any basis in facts or science. This case never should have reached our nation’s top court in the first place and the Supreme Court made the only reasonable decision by leaving access to medication abortion using mifepristone unchanged.”

Nikki Madsen, co-executive director of the Abortion Care Network, said she wasn’t surprised by the ruling, but noted it only preserves the status quo.

“It’s just not enough,” Madsen told States Newsroom. “We know that the anti-abortion extremists are relentless, and their goal is to truly chip away at any abortion access. So today’s decision just preserves access, but it’s really not enough for the people across the country who are truly navigating a human rights crisis right now.”

Military veteran Carrie Frail, who lives in north St. Louis County, used mifepristone to end a pregnancy about 15 years ago.

Access to abortion medication ultimately saved her life, said Frail, now 43.

At the time, Frail had two children from a previous marriage, when she started dating a man who she said became verbally and physically abusive.

When she told him she was pregnant with his child, Frail said the man threatened to punch her stomach until she miscarried, adding that he’d threatened violence against her on several occasions. Had she decided to have a child with him, Frail worries he ultimately would have killed her.

“None of us can know what any one person is going to go through, what they can experience,” she said. “And how an abortion may save their life in whatever capacity that looks like.”

Frail, who served for five years as a Korean linguist and intelligence analyst in the Air Force, said she’s angry that her daughter, who is also in the Air Force and stationed in Missouri, doesn’t have the same rights Frail did at her age.

“I can’t help but worry for women who may not have that option in the future,” she said.

Three intervenor states expected to continue fight at district court level

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative law firm that argued the case, is the same organization that argued in favor of the Dobbs decision that returned abortion regulation to the states. In a statement, ADF attorney Erin Hawley said the ruling was disappointing, but that they will continue to “advocate for women’s health.”

“The FDA recklessly leaves women and girls to take these high-risk drugs all alone in their homes or dorm rooms, without requiring the ongoing, in-person care of a doctor,” Hawley said, adding that ADF is grateful to attorneys general in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri who successfully intervened in the case at the district court level with Kacsmaryk’s approval, because they intend to keep litigating the case there.

In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote, “Today’s ruling only applies to standing; the court did not reach the merits. My case is still alive at the district court. We are moving forward undeterred with our litigation to protect both women and their unborn children.”

Bailey’s spokesperson did not give any further details about what that case would look like, and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a national anti-abortion organization, those attorneys general will move forward with the case “based on harms suffered by women in their states.”

Abortion opponents target abortion drugs from multiple angles 

Anti-abortion opponents have been fighting against the expansion of access to medication abortion since the FDA first approved the regimen in 2000, and they say they are not deterred by Thursday’s ruling.

“The Justices simply discussed the issue of legal standing and did not reach the merits of the case,” Carolyn McDonnell, litigation counsel at national anti-abortion policy shop Americans United for Life, told States Newsroom in a statement. “It’s still an open question whether the FDA unlawfully deregulated mifepristone.”

Longtime anti-abortion activist Rev. Pat Mahoney, chief strategy officer for the Stanton Public Policy Center, said the Supreme Court’s decision in this case was instructive, if not what abortion opponents wanted.

“There’s, I think, a misconception that a loss is a loss, and that isn’t always the case,” Mahoney told States Newsroom. “Sometimes a loss helps define the parameters for bringing the next case and next case, and believe me, there are going to be next cases on medical and chemical abortions. So now we know this isn’t a route to go.”

Mahoney said that like past legal defeats for the anti-abortion movement, this ruling offers at least a partial road map, such as the one abortion opponents followed after the Supreme Court ruled in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey that abortion until fetal viability was a federal right but that states could pass regulations that didn’t create an “undue burden” for people seeking abortions.

That ruling led to hundreds of restrictions and regulations around the country that kept nudging the viability and undue burden lines — limiting abortion access even before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Mahoney said his organization and others are pursuing various legislative proposals, such as regulating the disposal of embryonic and fetal remains following a medication abortion, which most people have at home or in private settings.

Americans United for Life said in a statement followin the ruling that it “will continue to offer legal prescriptions for the strengthening of protections for unborn children from abortion pills through action on the federal and state levels in both executive and legislative branches of government, including through executive enforcement of the Comstock Act and RICO Act.”

Ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned, resurrecting the long-dormant Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion drugs and equipment (something legal scholars and historians say is an inaccurate interpretation of the law and how it was applied) has been the long-term focus of East Texas pastor Mark Lee Dickson and his partner Texas attorney Jonathan Mitchell.

They have been pushing various legal and legislative strategies to prevent people from obtaining abortions in states where it’s still legal. They have helped pass dozens of local ordinances in Texas and other states with restrictions that challenge current federal law, such as banning interstate travel to obtain an abortion. In New Mexico, where abortion is legal and largely unrestricted, a challenge to two local ordinances based on the Comstock Act await a ruling from the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not address the Comstock Act in its opinion, but Kascmaryk cited the old law in his initial ruling last year. Major conservative groups are pushing former President Donald Trump, if reelected this fall, to enforce the Comstock Act along with other federal abortion regulations. Trump has stayed silent about what he will do.

In the meantime, anti-abortion groups have not stopped pursuing other cases.

“I can confirm that there are several attorneys in the pro-life movement that are planning on bringing a number of different lawsuits relating to abortion-inducing drugs and the harm that they cause to mothers and their unborn children,” Dickson told States Newsroom.

Mahoney also said groups like his are working with attorneys on a potential class-action lawsuit against abortion-pill manufacturers. He said they are “actively gathering testimony and information from women who have been hurt through medical chemical abortions.”

“We’re working on it,” said Mahoney, adding, “It took us 50 years to overturn Roe.”

Anna Spoerre of The Independent staff contributed to this report.

Packages of Mifepristone tablets are displayed at a family planning clinic on April 13, 2023 in Rockville, Maryland. (Photo illustration by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a much-anticipated decision Thursday that mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion, can remain available under current prescribing guidelines.

The high court unanimously rejected attempts by anti-abortion groups to roll back access to what was in place more than eight years ago, writing that they lacked standing to bring the case.

Those limits would have made it more difficult for patients to get a prescription for mifepristone, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved for up to 10 weeks gestation and is used in about 63% of U.S. abortions.

Erin Morrow Hawley, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, who argued the case in front of the court on behalf of the legal organization, doesn’t believe this is the end of efforts to challenge access to mifepristone. She is the wife of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is seeking re-election this year.

She said on a call shortly after the ruling was released the three states that intervened in a lower court — Idaho, Kansas and Missouri — could still advance their arguments against mifepristone and potentially hold standing, the legal right to bring a case.

“I would expect the litigation to continue with those three states,” Hawley said.

Kavanaugh writes opinion

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in the united ruling from the Supreme Court, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing a concurring opinion.

“Plaintiffs are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The four anti-abortion medical organizations and four anti-abortion doctors who originally brought the lawsuit against mifepristone have protections in place to guard against being forced to participate in abortions against their moral objections, he noted.

“Not only as a matter of law but also as a matter of fact, the federal conscience laws have protected pro-life doctors ever since FDA approved mifepristone in 2000,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The plaintiffs have not identified any instances where a doctor was required, notwithstanding conscience objections, to perform an abortion or to provide other abortion-related treatment that violated the doctor’s conscience.”

“Nor is there any evidence in the record here of hospitals overriding or failing to accommodate doctors’ conscience objections,” he added.

Alliance Defending Freedom has not “identified any instances where a doctor was required, notwithstanding conscience objections, to perform an abortion or to provide other abortion-related treatment that violated the doctor’s conscience since mifepristone’s 2000 approval,” the opinion said.

Kavanaugh might have also included hints on how the court will rule later this session on a separate abortion access case that addresses the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, known as EMTALA.

“EMTALA does not require doctors to perform abortions or provide abortion-related medical treatment over their conscience objections because EMTALA does not impose obligations on individual doctors,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Thomas agrees but questions who can sue

Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in the case, saying that he agreed with the court’s unanimous decision, which he did join, but brought up concerns with how a certain type of standing is used by the Court.

“Applying these precedents, the Court explains that the doctors cannot establish third-party standing to sue for violations of their patients’ rights without showing an injury of their own,” Thomas wrote.

“But, there is a far simpler reason to reject this theory: Our third-party standing doctrine is mistaken,” Thomas added. “As I have previously explained, a plaintiff cannot establish an Article III case or controversy by asserting another person’s rights.”

Reaction pours in

Politicians, anti-abortion groups and reproductive rights organizations all reacted to the ruling within hours of its release, often pointing to November’s elections as a potential next step.

President Joe Biden released a written statement saying the “decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues.”

“It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom,” Biden added. “It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.”

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, was in meetings most of Thursday with U.S. House Republicans and then separately with Republican U.S. Senators.

Neither Trump nor his campaign released a statement by early Thursday afternoon addressing the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote in a statement that the justice didn’t actually address the merits of the case.

“The Court did not weigh in on the merits of the case, but the fact remains this is a high risk drug that ends the life of an unborn child,” Cassidy wrote. “I urge FDA to follow the law and reinstate important safeguards.”

President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Stella Dantas related a statement saying the ruling “provides us with long-awaited relief.”

“We now know that patients and clinicians across the country will continue to have access to mifepristone for medication abortion and miscarriage management,” Dantas wrote. “Decades of clinical research have proven mifepristone to be safe and effective, and its strong track record of millions of patient uses confirms that data.”

Hawley from Alliance Defending Freedom wrote in a written statement the organization was “disappointed that the Supreme Court did not reach the merits of the FDA’s lawless removal of commonsense safety standards for abortion drugs.”

“While we’re disappointed with the court’s decision, we will continue to advocate for women and work to restore commonsense safeguards for abortion drugs—like an initial office visit to screen for ectopic pregnancies,” Hawley wrote. “And we are grateful that three states stand ready to hold the FDA accountable for jeopardizing the health and safety of women and girls across this country.”

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, wrote in a statement she had “both relief and anger about this decision.”

“Thank goodness the Supreme Court unanimously rejected this unwarranted attempt to curtail access to medication abortion, but the fact remains that this meritless case should never have gotten this far,” Northup wrote.

“The FDA’s rulings on medication abortion have been based on irrefutable science,” Northup wrote. “Unfortunately, the attacks on abortion pills will not stop here — the anti-abortion movement sees how critical abortion pills are in this post-Roe world, and they are hell bent on cutting off access.”

Missouri reaction

The ruling resulted in an immediate political reaction in Missouri as Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce sent out a fundraising appeal highlighting Erin Hawley’s role in pushing the case to the high court.

“The Supreme Court just unanimously rejected the Hawley family’s effort to ban mifepristone, the most commonly used abortion pill, in all 50 states for now, ruling the plaintiffs did not have standing,” the fundraising appeal began, adding that “Josh Hawley and his corrupt family business are doing everything they can to dismantle reproductive freedom piece by piece.”

Kunce’s appeal was quickly followed by one from Wesley Bell, the Democratic St. Louis County prosecuting attorney who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis in the primary.

Abortion rights supporters said they were relieved by the ruling.

Scrutiny of personal health care decisions won’t end with the court’s ruling, warned Richard Muniz, interim president and CEO of health services at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri. The organization provides medication abortions at its health center in Fairview Heights, Illinois, and through telehealth appointments.

“Anti-abortion actors will be back to try again as part of their long-term plan of banning abortion across the country,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Leaders with Abortion Action Missouri voiced similar concerns.

“Let’s be clear, the ruling today is a win– but only for now. Anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists have historically used the courts to adapt their attacks, only to come back for more,” the organization’s leaders wrote in press release Thursday. “This is not over, we still have work to do– fear and confusion about legality of and access to care serve as monumental barriers themselves.“

But Attorney General Andrew Bailey, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, vowed he would continue pursuing the state litigation because the case was decided on who could sue, not what they argued.

“My case is still alive at the district court,” Bailey wrote. “We are moving forward undeterred with our litigation to protect both women and their unborn children.”

Scientific evidence argued

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March, during which Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued the FDA’s guidelines for prescribing mifepristone were based on reputable scientific evidence and years of real-world use.

“Only an exceptionally small number of women suffer the kinds of serious complications that could trigger any need for emergency treatment,” Prelogar said. “It’s speculative that any of those women would seek care from the two specific doctors who asserted conscience injuries. And even if that happened, federal conscience protections would guard against the injury the doctors face.”

Hawley of ADF told the court that conscience protections in federal law didn’t do enough to protect anti-abortion doctors from having to possibly treat patients experiencing complications from medication abortion.

“These are emergency situations,” Hawley said. “Respondent doctors don’t necessarily know until they scrub into that operating room whether this may or may not be abortion drug harm — it could be a miscarriage, it could be an ectopic pregnancy, or it could be an elective abortion.”

The case reached the Supreme Court within two years of ADF originally filing the lawsuit in the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where ADF wrote the FDA “exceeded its regulatory authority” when it originally approved mifepristone in 2000.

ADF filed the case on behalf of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Pediatricians and Christian Medical & Dental Associations, as well as four doctors from California, Indiana, Michigan and Texas.

Kacsmaryk ruling started journey to high court

Judge Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk essentially agreed with the anti-abortion groups, in a ruling in April 2023, where he wrote he did “not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly.”

“But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions,” Kacsmaryk wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay at the request of the Justice Department, which put the district court’s ruling on hold until the appeal process could work itself out.

The Justice Department also appealed the district court’s ruling to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana, where a three-judge panel heard the case in May 2023.

The panel — composed of Jennifer Walker Elrod, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, as well as James C. Ho and Cory T. Wilson, who were both appointed by former President Donald Trump — issued its ruling in August 2023.

The appeals court disagreed with the district court’s ruling that mifepristone’s original approval should be overturned, though it said that the FDA erred in making changes to prescribing guidelines in 2016 and 2021.

“It failed to consider the cumulative effect of removing several important safeguards at the same time. It failed to consider whether those ‘major’ and ‘interrelated’ changes might alter the risk profile, such that the agency should continue to mandate reporting of non-fatal adverse events,” the appeals judges wrote. “And it failed to gather evidence that affirmatively showed that mifepristone could be used safely without being prescribed and dispensed in person.”

That ruling didn’t take effect under the Supreme Court’s earlier stay.

The Department of Justice wrote to the high court weeks later in September, urging the justices to take up an appeal of the 5th Circuit’s decision.

“The loss of access to mifepristone would be damaging for women and healthcare providers around the Nation,” the DOJ wrote in the 42-page document. “For many patients, mifepristone is the best method to lawfully terminate their early pregnancies. They may choose mifepristone over surgical abortion because of medical necessity, a desire for privacy, or past trauma.”

Briefs filed with court

Dozens of abortion rights organizations and lawmakers filed so-called amicus curiae or friend of the court briefs to the Supreme Court calling on the justices to keep access to mifepristone in line with the FDA guidelines.

A group of more than 16 medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, wrote that “restricting access to mifepristone will not only jeopardize health, but worsen racial and economic inequities and deprive women of the choices that are at the very core of individual autonomy and wellbeing.”

Anti-abortion groups and lawmakers opposed to mifepristone wrote numerous briefs as well.

Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming sent in a 28-page brief.

They wrote that the availability of mifepristone undermined states’ rights, since some of their states had sought to restrict abortion below the 10 weeks approved for mifepristone use or had sought to bar access to medication abortion.

“The FDA’s actions undermine these laws, undercut States’ efforts to enforce them, and thus erode the federalism the Constitution deems vital,” the attorneys general wrote. “Given these harms to federalism, this Court should view the FDA’s actions with skepticism.”

During oral arguments in March, several Supreme Court justices brought up conscience protections that insulate health care workers from having to assist with or perform procedures they have a religious objection to, like abortion.

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “worried that there is a significant mismatch in this case between the claimed injury and the remedy that’s being sought.”

“The obvious, common-sense remedy would be to provide them with an exemption that they don’t have to participate in this procedure,” Jackson said.

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch said the case seemed “like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule, or any other federal government action.”

Anna Spoerre and Rudi Keller of The Independent’s staff contributed to this report.

Embryologist Ric Ross holds a dish with human embryos at the La Jolla IVF Clinic February 28, 2007 in La Jolla, California. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

Two years have passed since Missouri outlawed abortion nearly completely.

Missouri’s life-begins-at-conception law also seems to outlaw in vitro fertilization (IVF), the medical process that enables many infertile couples to conceive and bear children. If citizens of Missouri wish to protect this procedure then there will need to be a new law.

How is IVF related to the state’s ban on abortion? Let’s start with a simple question: When Missouri law proclaims that life begins at conception, does that mean that fertilized eggs are persons? The Alabama Supreme Court said yes, shocking families whose doctors are helping them become pregnant through IVF. Likewise, when the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dobbs case held there is no constitutional protection for reproductive decisions, does that mean that destruction of fertilized eggs could be considered homicide under the laws of these states such as Missouri?

The Dobbs decision in 2022 turned these questions over to the states, subject only to federal statutes (which do not apply to IVF or abortion, so far), so the wording of states’ laws now really matters.

What should happen in a working democracy is that state legislators would change the laws before rulings strike down access to IVF or patients with ectopic pregnancies die waiting to be treated. Changes in laws are difficult in the current extremist era.

States like Missouri, where voters can change the constitution, can protect access to care. But Congress, if extremists prevail, could enact federal laws to limit or bar state protections, even state constitutions.

“Words have meaning…and their meaning doesn’t change,” said the late Justice Antonin Scalia. We should take Scalia’s advice as a caution when politicians throw words around to assure us falsely that all is well with IVF and women’s emergency health care.

After Dobbs, we must read carefully what state legislators have enacted for us that fully apply. We need also to be aware that nationwide legislation has been proposed in Congress to trump state law and ban or severely restrict abortion.

Let’s look at the words: In vitro fertilization (IVF) is the process of fertilizing a woman’s egg outside the womb (in a “test tube,” as you’ve heard) with a man’s sperm. The fertilized egg is then implanted in the womb with the hope a child is born at the end of the pregnancy. Fertilized eggs can be frozen, stored for later use. In some cases, these eggs are discarded inadvertently or on purpose.

Is there a distinction between “fertilization” and “conception?” Some may equate “conception” with “pregnancy,” which occurs when a fertilized egg is implanted in the woman’s womb. Not so, according to Missouri law, which equates “fertilization” and “conception” by defining “conception” as “the fertilization of the ovum (egg) of a female by the sperm of a male.” Missouri law plainly says that “the life of each human being begins at conception” and “the term ‘unborn children’ or ‘unborn child’ shall include all unborn child or children or the offspring of human beings from the moment of conception until birth at every stage of biological development.” It is not necessary that the fertilized egg be implanted in a womb to be considered an unborn child.


So, does that make accidental discarding of fertilized eggs manslaughter, or the intentional discarding of those eggs murder? 

A 1992 Missouri Supreme Court case upheld the conviction for manslaughter of a negligent intoxicated driver who injured a pregnant woman in a collision that killed her unborn child. The court cited the definition of an “unborn child” in the life-begins-at-conception law which plainly says “the laws of this state shall be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and decisional interpretations thereof by the United States Supreme Court and specific provisions to the contrary in the statutes and constitution of this state.”


Under current Missouri law, which considers fertilized eggs as persons, criminal punishments for women and doctors who discard fertilized eggs are possible unless legislators change the law or voters enact a proposed Missouri constitutional change likely to be on the ballot this November.

Some IVF proponents may take comfort from a pre-Dobbs 2-1 ruling in 2016 by the Missouri Court of Appeals that fertilized frozen embryos are not persons but are property of “special character.” The majority opinion was on solid ground when Roe v. Wade was the constitutional law of the land. But Roe is no longer law, so for any future ruling on this topic, we should look to the court of appeals dissent, also well-reasoned, which said that under Missouri’s law embryos are persons not property. In the recently concluded Missouri legislative session, a House bill to protect IVF was introduced but not referred to committee until the last day of the session, dead on arrival.

What about ectopic pregnancies, which result when fertilized eggs become implanted outside the womb, posing a serious risk to the woman’s life or health?

Medical care that ends these pregnancies may violate Missouri law which bans all abortions except in life-threatening emergencies or where there is serious risk of “substantial and irreversible” physical harm. Women will not be prosecuted, but a health care provider (not the state prosecutor) will have to prove that a woman’s life or physical health was in danger before the abortion care was provided. We will continue to have news reports of women denied care until they are clearly in danger of death or irreversible damage to their reproductive organs. Doctors, nurses, and midwives who practice obstetrical care will probably continue leaving states with such laws, especially where (as in Missouri) they must prove their innocence.

What’s the solution?


The anxiety resulting from the decisions stripping away the constitutional protection of the Roe v. Wade line of cases could readily be dispatched by a law from Congress to protect IVF as proposed by Senator Tammy Duckworth, or to more broadly protect reproductive healthcare, as proposed by Senator Tammy Baldwin. But so far, that has not happened. Legislative efforts in most states with restrictive laws, as we’ve seen in Missouri, are also blocked.


Which leaves these questions exactly where the U.S. Supreme Court put them – in the hands of voters in Missouri – who will decide whether to protect reproductive health care in our state constitution – and voters across the country who will decide whether Congress will have a working majority to override state laws.

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, speaks during a Freedom Caucus news conference in January, accompanied by, from left, Sens. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, Nick Schroer, R-Defiance, Jill Carter, R-Granby, and Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester. Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer are being sued for defamation over social media posts after the Chiefs’ victory parade shooting. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The Kansas man suing three Missouri lawmakers for defamation is challenging their assertions that their statements accusing him of being involved in the shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration were made in the course of official business.

In filings Monday in the federal lawsuits Denton Loudermill is pursuing against the three state senators, his attorneys demand a chance to test those assertions. Loudermill’s attorneys – Arthur Benson, LaRonna Lassiter Saunders and Katrina Robertson – filed three almost identical responses Monday to the motions for dismissal by state Sens. Nick Schroer, Rick Brattin and Denny Hoskins.

The three senators are being represented by Attorney General Andrew Bailey and their filings have claimed legislative immunity for their social media posts and that the Kansas federal court where the case was filed has no jurisdiction over them.

“Defendant’s assertion of immunity depends on a facts not conceded by plaintiff: whether or not Defendant was engaged in ‘legitimate legislative activity,’” Loudermill’s attorneys wrote in a response to Schroer’s motion to dismiss the case. “And that factual contention involves issues of whether or not defendant was formulating, making, determining, creating or opposing legislative policy.”

The filings demand a chance to conduct an investigation of the immunity claim if the case cannot move forward without a determination.

No hearings have been scheduled in the case.

Loudermill was detained briefly by law enforcement after gunfire erupted near Union Station in Kansas City as the Super Bowl celebration was ending.

The violence, tied to a dispute among the partiers, led to the death of Lisa Lopez-Galvan and left 22 others injured. Three men, none of whom is an immigrant, face state murder charges for their role in the shootings and three others face federal firearms charges for selling guns involved in the shootings.

Loudermill, who was born in Kansas, was detained briefly because he was too slow to leave the area of the shooting, he told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. 

He was photographed with his hands behind his back, sitting on a curb. An account on X, formally known as Twitter, with the name Deep Truth Intel used the photo and labeled Loudermill an “illegal immigrant” under arrest as the shooter.

It then showed up in posts from the Missouri Freedom Caucus, the group of six Republican state senators who battled with the Senate’s GOP leadership. The post was deleted and replaced with one that affirmatively stated he had nothing to do with the shootings.

Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer, as well as U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, also spread the incorrect information on social media, including the Deep Truth Intel post or a similar post with Loudermill’s photo.

Burchett is also being sued by Loudermill and is challenging the jurisdiction in the federal court in Kansas. Burchett is not claiming any form of official immunity for his post.

In the filings written by assistant attorney general Jeremiah Morgan, Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer have sought to tie their statements to their official duties.

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted Deep Truth Intel post.

That is a policy statement by an elected official, Morgan wrote about Brattin’s post.

“Defendant’s statement, directed at the President of the United States, was a statement on border security at the southern border—an issue of clear national and political importance,” he wrote.

Hoskins’ version on X shared a screenshot of the Deep Truth Intel post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Morgan’s defense of that statement is almost identical to the one raised for Brattin’s post.

“Defendant’s statement, directed at the President of the United States, was a statement on policies related to border security and the rights of citizens protected under the Second Amendment—issues of clear national and political importance and salience,” the filing states.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote on X. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

That post, Morgan wrote on Schroer’s behalf, is a call for transparency.

“A statement calling for greater government transparency in the investigations surrounding a tragic event is exactly the kind of ‘policy formulati[on]’ that legislative immunity exists to protect,” Morgan wrote. 

The assertions of official business mask the nature of the posts, Loudermill’s attorneys wrote.

“Labeling plaintiff as an illegal immigrant and a shooter was highly offensive to plaintiff and caused him injuries,” they wrote.

All four Republicans being sued by Loudermill have asserted that they did not direct their posts to a Kansas audience and that they have no personal connections to Kansas that gives the federal court there jurisdiction.

Loudermill’s attorneys responded that large numbers of people in Kansas saw the post and that Loudermill sustained the injury to his reputation in the state where he lives.

The entry of Bailey’s office to defend the lawmakers has drawn a sharp rebuke from some quarters. 

On May 16, the day before this year’s legislative session ended, Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican and a bitter foe of the Freedom Caucus members, tried to amend the daily journal to read that “it is the opinion of the Missouri Senate that the office of the attorney general should not expend any money from the state legal expense fund” to defend Hoskins, Schroer and Brattin.

And Gov. Mike Parson issued an order last month that no payments related to the lawsuits should be certified from the state Legal Expense Fund “without my approval or a court order.”

Missourians, Parson wrote, “should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media.”

The U.S. Supreme Court pictured on September 28, 2020. Congressional Democrats have called for ethics reforms for the court in the wake of recent controversies. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats echoed Senate colleagues Tuesday in calling for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to recuse themselves from Jan. 6 cases, and for congressional Republicans to support passing an enforceable ethics code for the entire bench.

Reps. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and vice ranking member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought together fellow progressive Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse with experts and advocates for a roundtable discussion on the “ethics crisis” facing the nation’s highest court.

Recent revelations of flags sympathetic to the “Stop the Steal” movement flown outside Alito’s home have reignited simmering concerns over justices’ conflicts of interest as they decide politically divisive issues. This year, justices are set to rule on access to the abortion pill and whether former President Donald Trump enjoys immunity from criminal charges alleging 2020 election interference, among other cases.

Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez delivered searing remarks, admonishing decades of court actions beginning with the 5-4 decision in 2000’s Bush v. Gore that ultimately decided the presidential victory for George W. Bush. The lawmakers continued on to recent events that Ocasio-Cortez characterized as “corruption that is almost comical.”

“The Supreme Court as it stands today is delegitimizing itself through his conduct,” the New York Democrat continued in her opening statement. “Americans are losing fundamental rights in the process — reproductive health care, civil liberties, voting rights, the right to organize clean air and water because the court has been captured and corrupted by money and extremism.”

Raskin, of Maryland, said the “highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards.”

In his opening statement, Raskin characterized the court as “the judicial arm of the Republican Party,” drawing a throughline from Bush’s appointments to the bench of Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito to Trump’s appointments of conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“Now this right-wing corporate court, carefully designed to destroy Roe v. Wade and marry right-wing religion to untrammeled corporate power, has been demolishing women’s abortion rights and contraceptive rights, civil rights law, voting rights law, civil liberties, environmental law, workers’ rights and consumer rights, enshrining government power over people and corporate power over government,” Raskin said.

Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez’s roundtable came less than a week after progressive House Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Hank Johnson of Georgia rallied with activists outside the Supreme Court urging an ethics overhaul.

That same day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky posted to X: “As the Supreme Court term ends, the Left is once again bullying Justices who refuse to take orders from liberal Senators. The Court should take any action it deems appropriate to reprimand unethical conduct by members of its Bar. And Justices should continue to pay this harassment no mind.”

‘Keep the pressure on’

Whitehouse told Democratic members of the Oversight and Accountability Committee that Senate Democrats are shining a “heavy spotlight on the mischief.”

The Rhode Island Democrat has championed an ethics bill titled the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which advanced out of committee along party lines in July 2023 but has not received a floor vote.

“We need to keep the pressure on until they join the rest of the government in having a real ethics code with real fact finding and some prospects for comparing the facts that are found to the rules,” Whitehouse said.

The bill was introduced during the fallout from a 2023 ProPublica investigation revealing that Justice Clarence Thomas received gifts from and traveled with a major Republican donor.

A recent analysis by watchdog group Fix The Court illustrated that over the last 20 years the value of gifts received and likely received by Thomas dwarfs that of his colleagues.

Whitehouse again pressed the court in May after the New York Times published that an upside-down U.S. flag hung outside Alito’s Alexandria, Virginia, home just days after former Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol. The Times later revealed another flag carried by Jan. 6 insurrectionists flew outside the justice’s New Jersey beach house.

Along with Sen. Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Whitehouse requested a meeting with Roberts to urge Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6 attack. Roberts declined, and Alito responded to the senators, declaring he would not recuse himself.

“Thank you Sen. Whitehouse for always flying the flag right side up,” Raskin said.

The court ‘will decide all of this for all of us’

Kate Shaw, University of Pennsylvania law professor, told the lawmakers that the court is “conducting itself in ways that are fundamentally inconsistent with basic separation-of-powers principles that are a core feature of our democracy.”

“This is crystal clear right now, as it is every June, as the country waits with bated breath to learn whether and how the court will upend huge swaths of American law,” she continued.

“This year questions include whether and how the court could further erode the capacity of agencies to regulate in ways that protect our health and safety and well being,” and major firearms decisions, Shaw said.

The court will also decide whether laws on the books will “be used to hold accountable individuals charged with the attack on the Capitol, including the former president,” Shaw said. “And the court is asserting that it and essentially it alone will decide all of this for all of us.”

Over two dozen opinions are expected from the Supreme Court by the end of June.

Two decisions related to two Jan. 6 cases remain pending — one involving a former police officer who breached the Capitol and is seeking to have an obstruction charge dropped. The decision could affect hundreds of Jan. 6 defendant cases, and the 2020 election interference case against Trump, who faces the same obstruction charge.

The court is also set to decide whether Trump is immune from four federal criminal counts alleging he schemed to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and knowingly spread false information that whipped his supporters into rioting on Jan. 6.

The Missouri Supreme Court building in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back an effort by Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas to push an election on Kansas City police funding to November.

The court on April 30 overturned the results of a 2022 election on the issue, agreeing with Lucas that the fiscal note summary printed on the ballot was misleading.  In that ruling, the court revised the fiscal summary and ordered the new election in November on the measure proposed by lawmakers.

On May 28, however, Gov. Mike Parson directed that the vote be held in August.

That set off a flurry of weekend filings by attorneys for Lucas and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. Starting Friday and concluding on Sunday, attorneys for Lucas asked the court to hold Ashcroft in contempt for accepting Parson’s directive and reset the election for November.

“The secretary’s action is especially perverse in light of the fact that this court has not yet ruled on (Lucas’s) motion to modify, which requested an adjustment to the court’s proposed fiscal note summary,” a May 31 filing signed by five attorneys representing Lucas stated. 

In response, attorneys for Ashcroft responded that he had no choice except to follow Parson’s order because the governor can call special elections on measures sent to voters by lawmakers. 

“Despite attempts by (Lucas) to claim otherwise, the Secretary of State acted appropriately and pursuant to the governor’s lawful order,” wrote Todd Scott of the attorney general’s office. “At worst, the secretary was placed in the unenviable position of performing his official duties in the face of potentially conflicting directives from the Supreme Court and the governor.” 

The court instead changed the election date in the opinion to agree with Parson’s order and dismissed the motion to hold Ashcroft in contempt as moot.

The April 30 decision wasn’t final when Parson set the election date, a footnote added to the opinion states.

“At the time of the governor’s and secretary’s actions,however, this court had not ordered a special election for November 5 (or any other date) because no mandate had issued and the April 30 opinion was not final,” the footnote states. “Accordingly, Lucas’ May 31 motion is denied as premature.”

And because the decision wasn’t final, the footnote states, the court doesn’t have to weigh the question of whether Parson had the power to alter an election date set by the courts. The court modified the order to conform with Parson’s election date on its own motion, the footnote states.

“As a matter of comity and to accommodate the governor’s apparent desire to have the question decided on that date, one of those modifications is to change the date of the special election now called by this court from Nov. 5 to Aug. 6, 2024,” the footnote states.

The court’s decision Tuesday ends litigation over when Missourians will vote and what they will see in the ballot language. The judges granted one minor point to Lucas in the changes made to the April 30 opinion – a footnote was added that the decision should not “be taken as expressing any opinion as to the enforceability” of a law setting funding levels for Kansas City police.

In a statement issued after the decision, Lucas said he appreciated the ruling in his favor on the original fiscal note summary and accepts the modifications to the April 30 opinion.

“Unlike others, we understand and respect the rule of law in our country,” the statement read. “We continue to appreciate the court’s ruling in favor of Mayor Lucas, local control for the people of Kansas City, and fair elections. We also respect the court’s rewording issued today, which now makes the Secretary’s prior unlawful action all good.”

The ballot measure, which will be Amendment 4, grew out of a conservative reaction to the “defund the police” rhetoric from Black Lives Matter protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. It would allow state lawmakers to pass a law mandating that Kansas City spend at least 25% of its general revenue budget on its police department.

When voters saw it in 2022, the fiscal note summary stated that the measure imposed no new costs and created no savings for state or local governments. That summary ignored Kansas City’s estimates that it could be required to increase police funding by up to $38.7 million, Lucas argued successfully to the courts in the case to overturn the election.

Missouri governor sets vote on tax exemption for child care centers, Kansas City police funding

When voters see it in August, the fiscal note summary will now incorporate that estimate: “This would authorize a law passed in 2022 increasing required funding by the City of Kansas City for police department requests from 20% of general revenue to 25%, an increase of $38,743,646, though the city previously provided that level of funding voluntarily. No other state or local government entities estimates costs or savings.”

The proposal applies only to Kansas City because its police department is funded from city taxes but controlled by the state under a board appointed by the governor. All other police departments are under the control of local officials.

An appellate court unanimously ruled Tuesday that a transgender man who formerly attended the Blue Springs School District was discriminated against when he was barred from using the boys' locker room (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

After a decade-long legal battle, a transgender man and former student of the Blue Springs School District should receive over $4 million in damages for discrimination that occurred when he was an adolescent, the Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Judge Anthony Gabbert wrote the court’s unanimous decision, ruling that the school district discriminated against the student, identified by his initials R.M.A., on the basis of sex when it barred him from using the boys’ locker room.

A key part of the appellate court’s decision was the factor that spurred the school district’s discrimination.

Attorneys for the Blue Spring School District did not contest that R.M.A. was treated differently, according to Gabbert’s ruling, but said it was because of his “female genitalia.”

“School district employees suggested that R.M.A. had been excluded from the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms because of [the] school district’s belief that he had female genitalia,” Gabbert wrote. “[The] school district did not actually determine the nature of R.M.A.’s genitalia, however, and does not speculate, inspect or otherwise inquire as to the genitalia of other male students.”

The admission of different treatment based on assumed genitalia, Gabbert wrote, was itself discrimination on the basis of sex.

Part of the judicial proceedings included testimony from R.M.A.’s doctor, who said R.M.A. was a male for as long as she has been treating him (which began at age nine).

During his time as a student, R.M.A. received an updated birth certificate with his male gender identity.

School district employees and school board members told R.M.A.’s mother that locker-room access is determined by birth certificate. After she gave the corrected birth certificate to school district officials, R.M.A. was still denied access to boys’ restrooms and locker rooms.

The school board discussed R.M.A’s birth certificate in a closed-door meeting, according to court documents, but never gave his mother a clear answer about the policy.

“The evidence at trial… was that (Blue Springs) School District had an unwritten policy of using birth certificates to determine sex,” Gabbert wrote. “Yet, [the] school district refused to tell R.M.A.’s mother that it would honor a corrected birth certificate stating he is male because (it) wanted to keep its options open in the event R.M.A. was able to obtain a corrected birth certificate.”

R.M.A’s birth certificate was amended in December 2014, around a year after he began asking to use the locker room that aligned with his gender identity and two months after he filed a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights.

R.M.A. filed the lawsuit in October 2015, starting a complicated legal process. The initial trial court dismissed his claim in 2016, saying the Missouri Human Rights Act does not protect claims on the basis of gender identity. The Missouri Supreme Court, in 2019, reversed this decision and opened the doors for another trial.

A December 2021 jury trial awarded R.M.A. over $4.7 million in damages and legal fees, but attorneys for the Blue Springs School District asked for a “judgment notwithstanding the verdict,” a ruling that allows a judge to usurp a jury’s decision. 

The school district argued that R.M.A. only proved that he was discriminated against “because of his female genitalia” and not on the basis of sex.

The trial court judge sided with the school district, which would have spurred another trial. But Tuesday’s decision reverses that judge’s call, returning the case back to the jury’s verdict.

There are other similar cases currently winding through Missouri’s courts, including a lawsuit against the Platte County School District brought by the ACLU of Missouri.

The Blue Springs School District could not be reached for comment by time of publication.

The Cole County Courthouse in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A state law requiring secrecy in court filings violates the Missouri Constitution’s requirement for open courts and imposes steep new costs on litigants, especially those pursuing appeals, a lawsuit filed last week argues.

The lawsuit, filed in Cole County by the Missouri Broadcasters Association, two attorneys and William Freivogel, editor of the Gateway Journalism Review, asks for the courts to overturn the law, passed during the 2023 legislative session.

Along with violating Missourians’ rights to courts that are open, the lawsuit alleges that the law violates First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution and sections of the Missouri Constitution limiting lawmakers’ powers to expand bills beyond their original scope.

Under the law and rules implementing it, every reference to a witness or victim in every case filing must be censored or the attorney filing it risks sanctions.

“For example, court records cannot even name the victim of a murder case –  even though murder is a terrible crime of great interest to every Missouri community and citizen,” the lawsuit states. “This makes it difficult for citizens and the media to fully follow and understand criminal cases of great interest. And there is no privacy  interest for redacting murder victims’ names, because homicide victims, being deceased, have no personal privacy interest.”

Removing those names can be time consuming and – when lawyers charge hundreds of dollars per hour – expensive, said Dave Roland, one of the attorneys working on the case.

Missouri hides more court information from the public than other states

The rules put additional burdens on prosecutors, defense attorneys and counsel in civil cases to scour their filings for possible violations, Roland said. The task is multiplied many times when preparing cases for an appeal, he said, because a party seeking to overturn a lower court ruling must file a complete copy of the court record – including transcripts of trials and other hearings – with all the prohibited information removed.

Transcripts are already expensive, Roland said.

“Depending on the length of the trial you know, the cost can vary,” he said. “If you have a one day trial, it may only be a couple of hundred dollars for the transcript. If you’ve got a multi-week trial, then it could be thousands of dollars.”

The two attorneys who are parties to the case, Michael Gross and Nina McDonnell, have turned down clients because of the additional cost and time 

“For example, Plaintiff McDonnell recently refused an employment discrimination direct appeal from a 12-day trial because redacting the transcripts would have required time the potential client could not afford, and the firm could not absorb,” the lawsuit states.

Roland’s co-counsels on the case include former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Wolff, who with Roland will represent Freivogel and the two attorneys, and Mike Nepple, Mark Sableman and Justin Mulligan of Thompson Coburn, representing the broadcasters.

In October, writing for Gateway Journalism Review, Sableman called Missouri the “State of Unnamed Persons.”

The new law hurts the public by hiding information, makes it difficult for attorneys outside the case to evaluate it and leaves people interested in a case unsure about how it was handled, he wrote. 

Even judges writing appellate opinions must follow the rules and leave out any individual identifiers, he noted.

“You can’t tell if ‘Expert Witness’ in one case had been found to lack credibility in a previous case,” Sableman wrote “You can’t tell if Officer D.V. in State v. Smith was found guilty of misconduct in another case. If you know and care about a particular case, you can’t tell if the witnesses you know about were called to testify or considered by the court.”

The broadcasters association joined the lawsuit because court records are a staple of news reporting, said Chad Mahoney, executive director of the association.

“You have to have the facts and the context to give people the whole truth,” Mahoney said. “And now a lot of the context, according to what we’re hearing from some of our member newsrooms, is lost, making it very difficult for them to inform the public about what’s going on.”

The lawsuit not only asks the court to throw out the law requiring censorship of court documents, it also argues that the bill in its entirety violates procedural rules in the constitution for passing bills.

Under those rules, a bill changing court operating rules established by the Missouri Supreme Court must be “a law limited to the purpose.” In addition, bills cannot be amended to change their original purpose and must deal with “one subject clearly expressed in its title.”

The bill that included the court censorship language began in the Senate as a four-page bill changing the dates in one section of state law concerning when a fund to support court automation expires, with a title stating it was about court automation.

When it left the Senate, it was five pages long and included a pay raise for court reporters. The title stated it was about court operations.

When it returned from the House, it was 54 pages long, it altered 29 sections of state statutes and the title stated it was about judicial proceedings. There are at least five provisions that have nothing to do with the courts, the lawsuit states.

State Rep. Rudy Veit, a Wardsville Republican, shepherded the bill through the House. He could not be reached Monday for comment on the lawsuit.

The provision was added on the House floor by state Rep. Justin Hicks, a Lake St. Louis Republican. Hicks could not be reached Monday for comment.

Hicks, a candidate for the GOP nomination to Congress in the 3rd District, has used the courts repeatedly to bury embarrassing information about his past. In 2021, he persuaded a St. Louis County judge to seal the records from a 2010 domestic violence case when a woman accused Hicks, then 17, of choking her.

A consent order signed by Hicks barred him from contact with the woman for a year.

When a potential candidate for Hicks’s House seat published copies of the order and other material from the case online, Hicks sued him and accused him of publishing private information. After initially sealing the case, St. Charles County Circuit Judge W. Christopher McDonough opened it, saying there was no “compelling justification” to keep it closed. The case has since been dismissed.

Because the lawsuit has just been filed, there has been no response from the state. But because the attorney general’s office, which will have to defend the law, has already been troubled by violations in its own court filings, Roland hopes for a quick resolution.

“It is possible, and this is me being optimistic, that the attorney general’s office may recognize that they’ve got a significant constitutional problem on their hands,” Roland said.

In a pending appeal of a $23 million award to HHS Technologies over a breach of contract claim with the state Medicaid system, Bailey’s office had to file the same set of documents three times to get the redactions right, the Kansas City Star reported.

“This illustrates the problem,” Roland said. “If the attorney general’s office is going to get dinged for failing to make proper redactions, it illustrates the problem.”

The Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis, home of the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

A United States District Court judge in St. Louis heard arguments Monday morning on whether the federal government can continue with a student-debt-forgiveness plan due to begin next month.

The lawsuit, filed last month by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, seeks to block an income-driven repayment plan for borrowers proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration. 

Missouri Solicitor General Josh Divine argued in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri Monday morning that the repayment plan, dubbed the SAVE Plan, was never authorized by Congress.

Divine is representing Missouri along with Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

“The defendants have asserted authority to redistribute $500 billion from teachers, farmers, nurses and truckers to those who haven’t paid off their student loans yet,” he said at the conclusion of his argument. “Congress simply did not give the president or the secretary (of education) authority to make a massive, monumental policy.”

Judge John Ross said it would take him “a couple of weeks” to craft an order. If Bailey gets his way, the court will block the federal government from approving additional borrowers for the SAVE Plan. Those who have already applied would not be affected, which U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Steven Petri said Monday was “news to (him).”

Bailey’s office blocked implementation of the Biden administration’s first attempt at loan forgiveness in a lawsuit settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2023. He has threatened to file suit against the latest plan for loan forgiveness announced by the federal government in April.

The SAVE plan, an acronym for “Saving on a Valuable Education,” sets monthly payments based on income, with some borrowers having monthly payments waived. Those who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for more than 10 years may have their debt canceled, with an additional year for each $1,000 additional borrowed.

The first forgiveness plan used the HEROES Act, which provides relief in time of emergency, to authorize $10,000 and $20,000 payments to borrowers. The HEROES Act was a central part of the Supreme Court case. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling that, “the (HEROES Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”

The SAVE plan, however, relies on the Higher Education Act. Petri described it as “an amendment to an existing plan.”

The law prescribes an income-driven repayment plan “paid over an extended period of time prescribed by the Secretary, not to exceed 25 years.” The wording of “not to exceed 25 years” was a central point in Monday’s arguments.

Divine said that while the federal government is using the wording as permission to forgive loans, he argued that the Secretary of Education should set rates that complete payment by 25 years.

“The text expressly requires repayment, ” he said, emphasizing the label of SAVE as a “repayment plan.”

Ross questioned this by saying that Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), a program that waives outstanding student debt after 10 years working in public service, is also named a repayment plan.

Divine said enrollees in PSLF make payments and must repay entirely “unless you satisfy the elements needed to obtain forgiveness.”

Petri said the Higher Education Act must be considered in full.

“We think that the full statutory language, taken as a whole, not only authorized in this plan but provides clear congressional authorization,” he said.

While the authorizing law has changed between the Supreme Court ruling and Monday’s arguments, Divine said the reason Missouri has standing in the case remains. He told the judge it was the “same exact theory of standing” argued last year, saying that the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) will be harmed if the plan goes into effect.

“MOHELA doesn’t just process loans, it owns loans… and it earns interest on those loans,” Divine said.

MOHELA is a quasi-governmental nonprofit. It did not consent to being part of the lawsuit that ended up before the Supreme Court, and internal communications released by loan-forgiveness activists show employees apprehension in being named.

MOHELA stands to lose $987 million if the plan is enacted in July, Divine argued.

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Simon Jerome said there are “problems with that number,” like the federal contract for many of these loans is expiring.

He also pointed to MOHELA’s request to downsize its portfolio by up to 1.5 million borrowers.

“And 1.5 million is quite a bit larger… than the 81,000 accounts slated for forgiveness under the SAVE Plan,” Jerome said.

Ross asked if the SAVE Plan might be removing borrowers in addition to MOHELA’s request.

“The department is committed to removing up to 1.5 million,” Jerome said. “There is room to right-size it.”

When loan payments resumed in the fall, MOHELA borrowers submitted complaints, like not receiving bills that led to them missing payment. As a result, the Department of Education fined MOHELA $7.2 million for “servicer failures.”

With fewer accounts to service, Jerome said, MOHELA can “get back on its feet.”

“These potential benefits, aren’t they all speculative?” Ross asked.

Jerome said the department used “a lot of data” in its estimation.

Divine also spoke about another entity he argues would be harmed, mentioning the Bank of North Dakota’s program refinancing federal loans. He said customers would not be likely to refinance with the bank after the SAVE Plan offers $0 payments and forgiveness.

“You don’t have to be an economist to understand that free money is appealing,” he said.

Jerome said this argument was “speculative.”

“For all of the Bank of North Dakota borrowers, I haven’t seen a single affidavit, haven’t seen a single statement from a borrower (promising to consolidate),” he said.

He looked at the bank’s website, he said, and noticed that it did not represent itself as a competitor with the federal government.

Jerome, additionally, told the judge he thought all the states should have to prove harm for the case to continue. In the previous Supreme Court case, just MOHELA’s harm was enough.

The timing of the case, which was filed in April months after the rule was proposed, will also come into consideration as there is a question of whether the attorney general’s office is too late.

Divine said the timing should be allowed because the office is only trying to proactively stop the program, rather than revoking loan forgiveness that has already occurred.

Ross asked him if he’s declaring “imminent harm,” why he didn’t file earlier.

Divine doesn’t read the Federal Register daily, he said, so he didn’t know about the rule until February.

Divine was part of a negotiated rulemaking committee on federal student loan relief from October to December, before removing himself from the committee. The committee was crafting the rule announced in April but discussed the SAVE plan, according to meeting transcripts.

Both the judge and Petri mentioned the State of Missouri’s involvement in negotiated rulemaking committees. MOHELA’s ​​Director Business Development & Government Relations Will Shaffner was part of the previous round of negotiated rulemaking in 2021-2022.

“I think any timing issue is a problem of (Missouri’s) own making,” Petri said.

He said the delay should “undermine an assertion of irreparable harm.”

MOHELA did not respond to a request for comment.

Article has been updated to correct Divine’s estimate of the SAVE Plan’s cost to taxpayers.

Marion Councilwoman Ruth Herbel waits Aug. 11, 2023, in the Marion County Record office following the raid on the newsroom and her home. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA, Kan. — Former Marion Councilwoman Ruth Herbel alleges in federal court that city officials orchestrated an illegal raid of her home — alongside the raid of the Marion County Record — as part of a conspiracy to silence criticism.

The Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based law firm that says it represents “everyday people” in opposition to abuses of government power, filed the lawsuit on Herbel’s behalf against former Mayor David Mayfield, former Police Chief Gideon Cody, Sheriff Jeff Soyez and other local authorities.

“Ruth ran for city council in Marion at age 76 because she was tired of her local government’s dishonesty and lack of transparency,” the Institute for Justice says in the lawsuit. “She quickly learned, though, that the men with the power in Marion were resistant to change, and public scrutiny.”

Herbel’s lawsuit is the fifth to be filed in response to the Aug. 11, 2023, raids by city and county law enforcement of the newspaper office, the publisher’s home and Herbel’s home. Recent court filings show the cases could be eventually consolidated.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is reviewing the actions by law enforcement, local officials and journalists before turning findings over to special prosecutors who will decide whether to file criminal charges.

Herbel’s lawsuit alleges violations of constitutional rights to free speech and protections from unreasonable searches and seizures. The narrative is consistent with a lawsuit filed April 1 by Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer, whose mother, Joan, the paper’s co-publisher, died of stress-induced heart failure a day after police raided her home.

The lawsuits accuse Mayfield of seeking vengeance for criticism of his actions.

As mayor, he once called Herbel a “bitch” during an executive session of the city council, her lawsuit contends. Mayfield asked the city attorney send a letter warning her that it would be illegal to speak about city business without the council’s full approval. He threatened to admonish her in a public meeting.

The lawsuit recalls Mayfield’s failed attempt to gather signatures for a recall election against Herbel, as well as a “harebrained scheme” to convince her she could be fired as an “at will” employee, even though she was a duly elected councilwoman.

In a July 25, 2023, social media post, Mayfield said it was not Black people, Asians, Latinos, women or “gays” but rather journalists who were “the real villains in America.”

A local restaurateur who asked the council for a liquor license became the unwitting catalyst for the raids when a resident pointed out that she had been driving on a suspended license, apparently with local law enforcement knowledge, after a drunken driving conviction. The resident distributed a copy of a government agency letter that outlined the situation.

“Mayor Mayfield and his allies hatched a plan to use the letter as pretext to punish Ruth and the Record,” according to Herbel’s lawsuit. “The theory they came up with was that, because the letter listed the restaurateur’s driver’s license number, simply possessing the letter was illegal and that someone ‘obviously’ stole the restaurateur’s identity to get the letter.”

But instead of a “real investigation,” the lawsuit alleges, the mayor worked with the police chief and sheriff “to maliciously procure baseless warrants” that were “based on lies and omissions.”

“No one even swore the allegations were true,” according to the lawsuit.

Cody, the police chief, didn’t sign the affidavits under oath, as required by federal and state law, and his unsworn signatures on the four affidavits appear to vary.

The lawsuit accuses local officials of “judge-shopping” for somebody who would sign the warrants. Instead of taking them to the district judge for the county, they sent them to Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who also had a history of drunken driving. Viar falsely asserted the applications were “sworn to before me” when she signed them — an action that is now subject to a complaint before the state’s judicial ethics panel.

The warrant failed to note that Herbel had received the letter from a tipster, that it was publicly available on Facebook, that the information included in the letter is a matter of public record, that she shared the letter as a public official in advance of a city council vote, or that police were knowingly allowing someone to drive on a suspended license.

“To make things worse, the warrants were also absurdly overbroad,” the lawsuit alleges. “But that hardly mattered because the police just took every phone and computer, without bothering to limit their searches to the terms of the overbroad warrants they drafted. The warrants, after all, were just a means to punish their critics.”

The search of Herbel’s home traumatized her husband, Ronald, who suffers from dementia. Police knowingly left the couple without a phone to contact their children or doctors. He remained on the couch for hours after police left and wouldn’t eat. The experience intensified his depression and anxiety. He couldn’t eat or sleep in the days after the raid. He would pace the house and cry.

The lawsuit contends it “should have been obvious” that there was no reason to search Herbel’s house. Her supposed crimes were identity theft and official misconduct, which involves the use of confidential information to intentionally harm someone.

“Simply obtaining a copy of a KDOR record on social media is not a crime,” her attorneys say the in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the news media’s spotlight on the raids spared Herbel from arrest. Cody sent an email to county prosecutor Joel Ensey with the subject line: “Crimes?” The email outlined five possible ways they could charge Herbel with a crime. As the lawsuit puts it, the descriptions of supposed crimes “betray Chief Cody’s willful and malicious misunderstanding or disregard of the law.”

“The conspiracy started with the defined goal of silencing Ruth Herbel and Eric Meyer, and the conspirators worked backward from there to find the closest thing to a crime that would let them achieve that goal,” the lawsuit contends.

This article originally appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts announces the results of the vote on the second article of impeachment during impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol on February 5, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Senate Television via Getty Images)

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told leading Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday he will not meet with them to discuss the court’s code of ethics, following revelations of displays of politically oriented flags at the homes of Justice Samuel Alito.

Individual justices will continue to decide their own recusals, Roberts wrote to Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, and Subcommittee on the Federal Courts Chair Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, in a letter obtained by States Newsroom.

Durbin and Whitehouse had asked Roberts a week earlier to force Alito to recuse himself from upcoming decisions related to the 2020 election and to meet to discuss proposals to strengthen Supreme Court ethics rules.

“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” Roberts wrote in the two-paragraph letter dated Thursday. “Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances.”

Justices rarely meet with legislators, particularly those who have expressed an interest in matters before the court, Roberts wrote.

Meeting with members of only one party would be especially problematic, he said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Durbin rejected Roberts’ reasoning, saying Durbin only sought to address the lack of public confidence in the court.

“The Chief Justice is wrong to say that simply meeting with members of Congress to discuss the Supreme Court’s ethics crisis threatens the separation of powers or judicial independence,” the spokesperson wrote.

“Due to the Chief Justice’s intransigence, Chair Durbin will continue his efforts to pass legislation establishing an enforceable code of conduct for all nine Supreme Court justices — regardless of which President appointed them.”

‘Immediately take appropriate steps’

Durbin and Whitehouse wrote to Roberts on May 23, asking him “to immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Alito will recuse himself in any cases related to the 2020 presidential election and January 6th attack on the Capitol.”

Flags at two Alito homes appeared to promote former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that his loss in the 2020 election was the result of a rigged election. That claim spurred the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

A May 22 New York Times report documented that a flag at Alito’s Virginia home flew upside down in the weeks following the 2020 election. Alito told the Times that his wife displayed that flag in reaction to a neighborhood dispute.

A New Jersey vacation home belonging to the Alitos was photographed in the summer of 2023 flying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which bears that slogan above a simple pine tree design. The second flag was also first reported in the New York Times.

Both flags were carried by rioters during the Capitol attack, raising questions for Durbin and Whitehouse about Alito’s ability to be objective in cases concerning former President Donald Trump’s role in the attack.

The court heard oral arguments last month in a case about whether presidential immunity shielded Trump from prosecution on federal charges he sought to overturn the legitimate election results.

The Democratic senators specified that the case was one from which Alito should recuse himself.

Roberts’ letter said Alito had written to the committee himself on that issue. That letter was not immediately available Thursday.

Missouri House Chief Clerk Dana Miller speaks Friday outside of the Cole County Courthouse about a lawsuit filed against Speaker Dean Plocher. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The top staff member of the Missouri House filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Speaker Dean Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation during battles over ethics charges and hiring decisions.

House Chief Clerk Dana Miller’s lawsuit follows months allegations about misconduct by Plocher and a House Ethics Committee investigation that ultimately was dismissed as the chairwoman released documents accusing Plocher of obstructed an investigation

In her lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, Miller cited the statute protecting whistleblowers from retaliation as the basis of her complaint. Miller, who is a nonpartisan officer elected by all 163 members of the House, said during a news conference that she did not intend to seek another term when a newly elected House is seated in January.

“We have a culture of fear now in that building with the staff that work there, and it’s time for me to speak up and say something,” Miller said.

Neither Plocher nor Jetton could be reached by telephone Friday. The House Communications staff was unable to immediately provide a response to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks an order finding Plocher, a Republican, violated Miller’s rights, to direct him to stop and award her monetary damages for “suffering emotional and mental distress, embarrassment, humiliation, and loss of enjoyment of life.”

The lawsuit, which names the House, Plocher and Jetton as defendants, cites disputes between Miller and Plocher that began last year when the speaker was pushing for the purchase of expensive constituent communication software. In the lawsuit, Miller accuses Plocher of pushing for the purchase because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign for lieutenant governor and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

Until she opposed the purchase because it was too expensive and duplicated internal House-created systems, she had a good working relationship with Plocher, Miller said.

“I got along with the speaker until I told him no,” Miller said.

Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She became chief clerk in 2018.

“I care about that institution,” Miller said. “I care about the house. I care about the people who work in the house and they just want to be able to do their jobs.”

The lawsuit is being filed, Miller and her attorney, Kevin Baldwin said, because obstruction and intimidation by Plocher and Jetton scuttled an ethics inquiry of Plocher. An investigator’s report detailed how some potential witnesses allegedly refused to speak out of fear Plocher would use his power as speaker to retaliate against them, while others did not appear because Plocher decided who the committee could compel to testify. And Plocher refused to cooperate with the attorney hired to collect evidence for the committee.

Lori Hughes, director of administration for the Missouri House, sent an email March 5 to Ethics Committee Chairwoman Hannah Kelly where she detailed events over several months that she said were designed to intimidate her and other nonpartisan legislative employees. 

“In my over 21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job,” Hughes wrote in the March 5 email to the committee chair.

In her court filing, Miller goes into deeper detail about the events surrounding the ethics inquiry than had previously been made public.

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when The Independent obtained emails from Miller that stated she was worried Plocher had engaged in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of the months-long push for the contract to a company called Fireside to manage constituent information.

Miller had been pushing back on the purchase plan but Plocher was determined to get it in place.

During a discussion with state Rep. Dale Wright, chair of the Administration and Accounts Committee, the lawsuit states, Wright told her he “had concerns that Speaker Plocher’s push to purchase Fireside was directly related to a large campaign donation” he expected. 

A month after reporting on the software contract, The Independent also reported that Plocher had, on numerous occasions over the last five years, illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

The lawsuit states that Plocher’s demands for reimbursements was another point of contention between him and Miller.

In October, the lawsuit states, Miller met with Plocher’s then-chief of staff Kenny Ross, who told her that Plocher’s campaign consultants, David Barklage and Jon Ratliff, believed she was leaking negative information to the media and wanted her to “back off.” 

Within a month, Ross had been fired. The lawsuit states Ratliff told Ross the reason was “because he didn’t stop ‘Danagate.’” 

Ross has previously declined requests from The Independent to discuss his dismissal.

The allegations in the lawsuit are not based on hearsay or conjecture, said Baldwin.

“Everything that’s in there can be substantiated through emails, recordings, allegations, threats and things that have been said,” he said. “They’re not simply the statements of Dana Miller, but they are supported by documentary evidence.”

Jetton said to Miller in a meeting he was there to make peace between Miller and Plocher, the lawsuit states, and Jetton said Plocher was “seeing a lot of ghosts” and he felt that he could “get things calmed down.”

The relationship soured, Miller said at the news conference, when she tried to protect another employee from retaliation.

“When I took some steps to protect a particular employee who was in a very vulnerable position, that changed and it changed overnight,” Miller said.

The lawsuit details a Dec. 21 meeting between Jetton, Plocher, Wright, House General Counsel Bryan Scheiderer and Danyale Bryant, a staffer of the accounts committee.

At the meeting, the lawsuit states, Jetton said to Bryant “that they needed to ‘choke’ the Chief Clerk’s authority. Bryant said Jetton made a physical choking gesture with both hands as he made this statement. This event particularly concerned Plaintiff given the prior allegations against Jetton for his alleged physical assault on a woman.”

Plocher hired Jetton, himself a former House speaker from southeast Missouri, despite a past that included pleading guilty to assault after a sexual encounter where Jetton was accused of choking a woman until she passed out and admissions from Jetton that he became addicted to alcohol and the power inherent in the speaker’s office.

The lawsuit also describes instances of Plocher’s attitudes toward women, noting that she counseled him in May 2022, when Plocher was House Majority Leader, about complaints from female House members.

“Plaintiff had also overheard Plocher refer to State Representative Sara Walsh as ‘stupid’ in the House Chamber during a session of the House,” the lawsuit states. “Rep. Plocher’s reaction to Plaintiff’s sharing of those concerns was to be dismissive. He replied, ‘They are like an invasive species.’ When Plaintiff expressed her confusion over that statement, then Rep. Plocher clarified, ‘Stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.’”

Walsh, an Ashland Republican, was a House member from 2017 until 2023. In a text message to The Independent, Walsh confirmed that Plocher had called her stupid when she tried to get the House to repeal a fuel tax enacted in 2021.

Plocher “was upset that I introduced the amendment to repeal the gas tax hike and he said I was ‘too stupid’ to draft it myself,” Walsh wrote.

In a statement, Miller said the ethics investigation of Plocher failed because of his obstruction.

“What I have discovered is that the very mechanism that is designed to find the truth has failed,” she said. “You have heard the chair and vice chair speak of obstruction that limited their ability to complete a full and thorough investigation.”

Holly VanOstran, one of the attorneys assisting on the case, said she had worked in human resources and she was appalled by the conditions Miller and other House employees have endured.

‘Things that would never be tolerated in a corporate environment have been allowed to run rampant here,” VanOstran said. “There are politicians who believe that they’re above the law and that they can’t be held accountable for their actions.”

This article has been updated to correct the human resources role held by VanOstran.

(Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent)

Buchanan County can collect a special marijuana sales tax on dispensaries within St. Joseph city limits, a judge ruled Wednesday in the second decision granting counties the right to stack taxes on top of city levies.

Circuit Judge Daniel Kellogg wrote in his two-page ruling that provisions in the recreational marijuana constitutional amendment passed in 2022 do not limit the taxing power of counties within corporate limits of towns and cities.

“To put it bluntly, the court cannot accept (the) plaintiff’s interpretation of ‘Local Government’ to prohibit the power of the county to impose such tax within the Saint Joseph city limits,” Kellogg wrote. “The definition of ‘Local Government’ includes both the city and the county. As such, both are authorized to impose and collect the tax.”

Vertical Enterprises, which is licensed for retail sales, cultivation and marijuana product manufacturing in St. Joseph, sued the Buchanan County Collector’s office, the Missouri Department of Revenue and the Buchanan County Clerk’s office to block enforcement of the tax.

Along with regular sales taxes – which in some locations approach 12% – people purchasing marijuana for recreational use also pay a special 6% state tax and a local tax of 3% if approved by voters.

The ruling will cost Vertical’s customers about $30,000 a month, said Chris McHugh, CEO of the company. There are two other dispensaries in St. Joseph and he estimated their tax payments would be comparable to his.

“Consumers should be outraged,” McHugh said. “They’re paying this.”

Statewide, consumers purchased $1.1 billion worth of marijuana in the first year of recreational use sales.

“This is millions and millions of dollars that never, never should be taken from consumers,” McHugh said. “It’s nothing but an anti-marijuana tax.”

McHugh said he will appeal Kellogg’s decision.

MoCann Trade, the industry lobbying organization, said in a statement from Executive Director Andrew Mullins, that excessive taxes on marijuana drive customers into the underground, unregulated market.

“Since Oct. 1, Missouri cannabis customers have been paying roughly $3 million more each month than what the Missouri Constitution requires,” Mullins said.

Drafters of the amendment legalizing marijuana wanted to prevent stacking, so they used the broad term “local government” for the entity authorized to impose a tax. To make it apply to both cities and counties, the term was defined as meaning “a village, town, or city” for incorporated areas and counties for unincorporated places.

But the revenue department, interpreting the new tax law, told local governments that county marijuana taxes may be stacked, making the local tax rate on marijuana purchases 6% in places where county and city voters have approved the levy.

Almost everywhere the tax has been on the ballot, it has passed, sometimes with overwhelming majorities as in Unionville in April, where it was backed by 73% of voters.

Regular sales taxes are stacked and consumers pay the 4.225% state rate plus the local taxes for counties, cities and special taxing districts. 

A 2023 notice from the department’s Taxation Division stated that the section of the constitution authorizing the tax states that any successful vote is applicable to the “political subdivision” where it was enacted.

The amendment did not define “political subdivision,” the notice stated.

“The distinction between local government and political subdivision is important as voters in the entire county will authorize the additional tax, not just voters in the unincorporated area,” the notice stated. “And practically, counties do not otherwise limit the applicability of their sales taxes based on geography.”

The interpretation generated both the lawsuit in Buchanan County and another in St. Louis County. In a ruling that is being appealed, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May wrote that the interpretation offered by the plaintiff in that case, Robust Missouri 3 LLC, operator of a dispensary in Florissant, could have unintended consequences.

“If [Robust’s] interpretation were accepted, then a municipality or city would essentially be given carte blanche to ignore any county ordinance or regulation, including those related to public health and safety wholly unrelated to the taxing issue,” May wrote in the ruling.

Getting the same result from two courts shows the strength of the argument that the taxes can be stacked, said Steve Hobbs, executive director of the Missouri Association of Counties.

“From the very beginning, our position was absolutely that the constitutional amendment left this avenue open,” Hobbs said. “We’re really satisfied that, you know, our position was proved correct in two places.”

The trial court decisions aren’t controlling precedent and neither Hobbs nor McHugh said the cases would end at the courts of appeals.

“Everyone understands this is going to end up at the (Missouri) Supreme Court,” McHugh said, “so we’ve got to go through the process.”

This article has been updated with a comment from the MoCann Trade Association.

Two "no-chance" gambling machines await customers in a Columbia convenience store (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

The courts cannot shield Missouri’s biggest vendor of games offering cash prizes from criminal prosecution for gambling violations, the Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

In a unanimous decision, the court upheld last fall’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Torch Electronics that sought an order barring the Missouri State Highway Patrol from seizing machines and seeking criminal charges. The civil courts cannot be used to interfere with criminal proceedings, Judge Edward Ardini wrote for the three-judge panel that heard the case.

“It is evident from plaintiffs’ amended petition that their objective in bringing this lawsuit is to enjoin law enforcement from determining the devices are criminal and seizing them,” Ardini wrote. “We are not persuaded by plaintiffs’ attempts to characterize their claim as one seeking declaratory judgment interpreting a civil statute.”

In his October 2023 order, Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green also dismissed the claims of the Missouri Gaming Association, which intervened in the case by arguing Torch operations caused “a loss of business for association members (licensed, regulated casinos) and undermines the public policy of legal, regulated, licensed gaming.”

The opinion handed down Tuesday also upheld Green’s dismissal of the Gaming Association claims. Just as the civil courts cannot declare an activity to be protected from prosecution, Ardini wrote, the courts cannot declare that a particular activity is criminal.

“Missouri courts do not provide equitable relief that interferes with the enforcement of criminal law absent a challenge to the law’s constitutionality or validity,” Ardini wrote.

If the court had upheld either challenge to the dismissal, the result would have put the case back in Green’s hands for further proceedings. A final appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court is possible but attorneys for the losing parties said Tuesday they weren’t certain they would continue the case.

“We are reviewing the decision to determine our next steps,” said Chuck Hatfield, attorney for Torch.

Marc Ellinger, attorney for the Gaming Association, said his clients are also reviewing the opinion.

“We will make our decisions in due course,” Ellinger said.

The case decided Tuesday is the first appellate decision involving what vendors call “pre-reveal” or “no-chance” gaming machines that have proliferated in Missouri since 2018. There was one felony conviction involving non-Torch machines and several misdemeanor convictions but none have been appealed.

Torch filed the lawsuit in early 2021 against the patrol, the Department of Public Safety and the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control. In it, Torch accused the patrol of a campaign of “harassment and intimidation” targeting its games, which are offered to patrons of convenience stores, truck stops and other locations around the state.

Its games are not illegal, Torch argues, because a “pre-reveal” player can learn the outcome of the upcoming play before putting money at risk. That means they are not games of chance, the company argues.

Opponents argue that it is the unknown results of future plays that make the games illegal. That has led to them being called “gray market” machines because of the uncertainty.

At that time, Torch was facing felony prosecution in Linn County for promoting gambling, a case that has since been dismissed. The company also sued the Linn County prosecuting attorney.

A review by The Independent in 2021 showed the patrol had sent prosecutors 190 cases in 2019 and 2020 requesting charges for illegal gambling and that only a handful of cases were actually filed. Torch has cited that article repeatedly in its court filings to show that there is a consensus among prosecutors that its games are legal.

Torch is not currently a defendant in any criminal case.

Torch is challenging a new ordinance in Springfield outlawing games that offer cash prizes. Torch has sued the city, arguing that the new ordinance should not be applied to its games.

As of late April, Springfield had issued 36 citations to businesses with the machines that allegedly violate the ordinance, the Springfield News-Leader reported.

Legislative efforts to rewrite state gambling laws have been stymied by strong lobbying by Torch as well as disagreements over what kind of new gambling, if any, to allow in the state. Attempts to legalize sports wagering have failed, as has a push to allow video games operated by the Missouri Lottery.

Major league sports teams banded together with online gambling companies for an initiative petition drive that could put sports betting on the ballot later this year. Casino gambling, the state lottery, and parimutuel wagering on horse races are currently legal, along with raffles and bingo for nonprofit organizations.

In Tuesday’s decision, Ardini wrote that it is bad policy for the civil courts to take on challenges to enforcement of criminal laws.

“There are sound policy reasons why courts should not be used to civilly enforce criminal laws, including the difference in the burden of proof between a criminal prosecution and an action for equitable relief,” Ardini wrote. “Further, courts should avoid encroaching on the constitutional and statutory duties of prosecutors to enforce the criminal laws by permitting private litigants to seek enforcement through a civil action for declaratory or injunctive relief.”

(Getty Images)

A Cole County Circuit Court judge ruled Friday that Republican James Coyne cannot be blocked from the August primary ballot by Democrat Stephen Webber.

Both are seeking the 19th District state Senate seat now held by Republican Caleb Rowden, whose term expires this year.

Coyne was selected Tuesday by the Boone County GOP candidate selection committee to represent the party in the August primary and fall general election.

Former state Rep. Chuck Basye had filed to run for the seat by the March 26 deadline but dropped out of the race on April 25 after receiving a cancer diagnosis.

State law gives a local nominating committee two weeks to meet to select a replacement candidate, which Webber said they had failed to do. He sought a temporary restraining order, claiming that allowing Coyne to stay on the ballot would cause him irreparable harm.

Judge Jon Beetem ruled after a hearing Friday that Webber, as a Democrat, had no standing to challenge Coyne’s candidacy in the Aug. 6 Republican primary.

Beetem also ruled that Webber had not established irreparable harm to his candidacy, noting that he had time to raise money to run in the Democratic primary, in which he is unopposed, and the general election.

“There is no harm to a candidate in having to run for office and raising money is a well-known aspect of running for office,” Beetem said in his order.

In April, Webber reported that he had raised a combined $915,152 from his two election committees during this election cycle.

This story originally appeared in in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online. 

(Getty Images)

The University of Missouri, on behalf of St. Louis Public Radio, is making an unprecedented legal claim of sovereign immunity in the defamation lawsuit filed against it by former general manager Tim Eby.

Eby maintains he was defamed by stories quoting station employees accusing him of upholding “white supremacy.”

The university’s legal filings describe the station as “an arm of the state exercising exclusively governmental functions” and conclude it should receive immunity from Eby’s suit.

Eby’s lawsuit is against the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, who hold the license for St. Louis Public Radio. The legal defense of sovereign immunity originates with the university lawyers.

The legal filings do not cite a case where a public broadcasting network affiliated with a state has won a claim to sovereign immunity in a defamation case. A LexisNexis search by Gateway Journalism Review found no decisions where a federal or state court had recognized this government immunity from a defamation suit for a public broadcaster with a government affiliation.

Sovereign immunity is a doctrine from English law to protect the king and government from lawsuits. Former president Donald Trump builds on this doctrine in claiming absolute immunity for presidential acts. Police officers and other government officials also receive qualified immunity from many civil rights suits.

But, until now, no public broadcasting operation has won such a claim. In fact they have run away from government entanglements.

Last year National Public Radio complained when Elon Musk’s X platform labeled NPR “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” media. NPR stopped posting content on X because it thought the government labels undermined their journalists’ independence.

John Lansing, head of NPR, said at the time: “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”

When Congress established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the statute explicitly stated  it “will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government.”

The university’s legal argument in the Eby case is that the station “is in effect an arm of the state exercising exclusively governmental functions and is therefore immune from liability” in the same way as “the State Department of Agriculture or a public hospital district.”

Eby’s attorney, Christian Montroy, expressed surprise that St. Louis Public Radio is representing its news organization as “state-run media” immune from defamation suits that other media would face for publishing or broadcasting the same content.

Eby’s legal filing argues that portraying St. Louis Public Radio as “exercising exclusively governmental functions” conflicts  with St. Louis Public Radio’s frequently expressed claim of being “editorially independent,” which is expressed in its Statement of Editorial Integrity.

That statement says:

“….even though the University of Missouri System Board of Curators owns our FCC license, we maintain editorial independence of our content. This is in alignment with UMSL’s foundational principle of academic independence upon which the University of Missouri system is founded. The support we receive from the University of Missouri-St. Louis does not influence our editorial content or news coverage.”

Tina Pamintuan, St. Louis Public Radio’s CEO (and Eby’s replacement), told the Riverfront Times, which first reported on the sovereign immunity claim, that the public need not worry.

“I am 100% confident in the journalism that is produced at STLPR,” she said. “Our reporters are highly trained professionals who take a lot of care in their work. STLPR exists to uplift its community and this region through fair, rigorous, fact-based news and information. That is our focus and it’s important that we continue to keep that in mind. Like all nonprofit media, we have limited resources that are put to best use by prioritizing our mission.”

The sovereign immunity claim, which the state has been making since last fall, came before St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Patrick Whyte for a hearing last month. Joseph E. Martineau, a media lawyer  serving as outside counsel for the state and station, declined to comment, as did Christian Basi, spokesman for the the University of Missouri.

Eby had been the station’s general manager for 11 years until he was forced out in September 2020

His removal came after the contentious summer of 2020 when a group of staffers published a blog post accusing him of choosing “to uphold white supremacy at the station.” A story on the station’s website linked to the blog post and another story a year later stated Eby resigned “amid accusations from newsroom staff that he ignored problems of systemic racism at the station and mismanaged finances.”

Eby maintains the station knew these statements were false.

Gateway Journalism Review’s Lexis search found only one defamation case in the nation where a public radio station connected to state government had tried to claim sovereign immunity in a defamation case. That one was in Missouri and the station lost.

In the 1982 case of Allen v. Salina Broadcasting, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Southern District ruled that Salina Broadcasting could not claim sovereign immunity even though the public radio station was run by a public school.

The station had reported that Allen, a realtor, was “starving his cattle to death.”

The appeals court had to decide if the station’s report was part of its governmental functions at the school, which would give it sovereign immunity, or instead was a “proprietary” function, which would mean it did not get sovereign immunity.

The court ruled the station’s actions were proprietary.

“At the time of the alleged defamatory broadcast… there was ‘substantially’ no student involvement….the particular news program complained of was handled and broadcast by paid staff personnel with students seldom, if ever, called upon to participate in any meaningful sense.”

Eby’s lawyer says the Salina case should control the decision on sovereign immunity in the St. Louis Public Radio case. The St. Louis station was acting in a proprietary, not governmental way, just like the Salina case.

At St. Louis Public Radio, paid staff compose and broadcast news reports without significant student help and the reports are broadcast to a wide audience, not just within the university.

The state, on behalf of the station, contends that Judge Whyte should not follow the Salina case because a university is different from a local school. It points out that a public hospital was found by Missouri courts to have sovereign immunity. St. Louis Public Radio is more like a public hospital than a public school, it argues.

This story was originally published by Gateway Journalism Review. 

A 2020 change to the law could be the key to whether the Vernon County candidates remain on the ballot after the appeals court arguments scheduled for June 25 (Getty Images).

Eight Republican candidates for county office – including four GOP incumbents – will be on the ballot in Vernon County in August, at least until a lawsuit plays out at the Missouri Court of Appeals.

An order issued Wednesday by the Western District Court of Appeals stayed a trial court decision directing Vernon County Clerk Adrienne Lee to remove the names from the ballot. The order, issued by Presiding Judge Lisa White Hardwick, is intended “to prevent the appeal from becoming moot” because of tight deadlines for Lee to finalize the Aug. 6 ballot.

The case is one of two in Missouri this year that illustrate the power – and limitations – of political parties in controlling who seeks nomination to office. The core dispute in both cases is whether the decision is made when the party accepts or refuses the legally required filing fee that is paid to the parties.

In Vernon County, the Republican Central Committee refused to accept the filing fees of any candidate who did not accept its vetting process. Candidates must sign a pledge to support the Republican Party platform and a 75% or better score on a test with 25 questions taken from the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian party platforms, Mark McCloskey, an attorney representing the county party, said in an interview with The Independent.

“If there is a reason to have a Republican Party, as opposed to a Democrat Party or Libertarian Party, it’s got to be that there are some core values that are represented by that party that are different than the other party,” McCloskey said.

In the other case, in Cole County, the Missouri Republican Party last week lost a lawsuit seeking to kick Darrell McClanahan III off the ballot for governor. McClanahan, a resident of Milo in Vernon County, is listed first, with eight other candidates.

The state party doesn’t want McClanahan on the ballot because he admitted being an “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. McClanahan also faces felony property damage and stealing charges in a case being heard in Wright County.

The state Republican Party sued Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to remove McClanahan, but Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote that by accepting his $500 filing fee, the party was stuck with him.

In his ruling, handed down last week, Walker noted that McClanahan was a candidate in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in 2022 and the party did nothing to prevent him from filing for governor.

“Here, the situation of which the plaintiff complains only exists because it made the voluntary decision to accept filing fees, on two occasions, that McClanahan offered in accordance with Missouri law,” Walker wrote.

Lowell Pearson, attorney for the state party, did not return a call seeking comment on the decision. So far, no appeal has been filed. If an appeal is made, it will go to the same court hearing the Vernon County case.

Dave Roland, attorney for McClanahan, said Republicans should have learned they could not boot McClanahan from the ballot from a case he handled in 2018 involving the Democratic Party. At that time, the party sued unsuccessfully to keep John Boyd Jr. off the ballot in the 36th House District. 

The party accepted Boyd’s filing fee despite his two previous bids for office as a Republican. Ashcroft, a Republican who is running for governor, was not defending McClanahan’s spot on the ballot, Roland said.

“They were going to let him be bulldozed,” Roland said. “And regardless of what I feel about some of the opinions that Mr. McClanahan has expressed, I was not cool with him getting bulldozed like that, especially when I think he’s right on the law.”

The Cole County case shows why the state party should adopt a vetting process like the one adopted in Vernon County and several other counties across the state, McCloskey said.

McCloskey, who gained national attention when he was photographed outside his home in 2020 pointing a firearm toward Black Lives Matter protesters, was also a candidate in the 2022 Senate primary.

McClanahan’s views were known at that time, McCloskey said.

“If we’d had a good vetting process, it would have weeded out McClanahan before he ever got to the secretary of state’s office,” McCloskey said.

Walker, in his ruling, alluded to vetting as a way to screen candidates.

The Republican Party “is a sophisticated entity and the record shows that it was not only aware of a party’s authority to reject a filing fee offered by a candidate,” Walker wrote, “but that segments of the Missouri Republican Party have already adopted a policy of rejecting filing fees from any candidate who has not completed a prescribed vetting process.”

Walker also wrote that primaries are intended to put nominating decisions in the hands of rank-and-file party voters, not party leaders.

“If the party’s voters eventually did choose McClanahan as their nominee, it could merely indicate that the plaintiff did not actually know or correctly represent the values or interests of its own rank and file members,” Walker wrote.

The filing fee is required by state law and varies in amount depending on whether the office is a statewide position, a legislative post or local office. For candidates who file at the secretary of state’s office, the fee goes to the statewide party committee. For local offices, the money benefits the county central committees.

A 2020 change to the law could be the key to whether the Vernon County candidates remain on the ballot after the appeals court arguments scheduled for June 25. At that time, lawmakers rewrote the statute to require fees due when filing at the secretary of state’s office to be paid directly to the political party. The legislature left in place an allowance for the fee in local races to be paid to the election authority and forwarded to the local party treasurer.

For years, Democratic and Republican state parties have sent representatives to the secretary of state’s office to speed up the process for the hundreds of candidates who file on the first possible day – the only time when the first position on the ballot is available.

In 2018, the Democratic Party representatives at the secretary of state’s office refused to accept the filing fee presented by state Rep. Courtney Curtis of St. Louis as he filed for a state Senate seat. When Curtis went upstairs and attempted to file without a signed receipt, his paperwork was refused.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the party had no legal duty to accept the filing fee and that Curtis did not attempt to pay the fee directly to the secretary of state’s office, as the law allowed at the time. The ruling prompted the change in law.

Lawmakers only changed the requirement for candidates filing in Jefferson City. The eight Vernon County candidates awaiting a final ruling paid their fees in the clerk’s office.

The clerk should have waited for the party to decide whether to accept the money before allowing the candidates to finish filing, Circuit Judge Gayle Crane ruled.

“The court finds that the Vernon County Clerk failed to perform the ministerial duty imposed by Section 115.357 of receiving a receipt from the party the candidate seeks nomination from, prior to accepting a declaration of candidacy,” the order states.

The appeal will seek to prove the clerk did everything as she should have and the party’s decision on whether to accept the fee is irrelevant, attorney Travis Elliott, who is representing the clerk, said Thursday.

“The statute says that a candidate may submit their filing fee to the county clerk who shall promptly forward it to the party, whichever party it is,” Elliott said. “And so once she has done those things that the statute says, there can be no mandamus for other things that the statute does not say.”

The candidates who could lose spots on the ballot include the incumbent county assessor, county treasurer, public administrator and an associate commissioner. The other four include two candidates for sheriff and two candidates for a commission seat.

Mike Buehler, one of the candidates for sheriff, is a former county clerk who resigned because he did not want to create any concern he would favor himself in the election.

He said he refused to undergo the vetting because it would put his loyalty to the party above his loyalty to the duties of the office.

“I will not lay down,” Buehler said. “I will not let them bully people, or push them around like they’re doing with us. I will stand up for all eight of us if I have to.”

Buehler said he will run as an independent if necessary. 

“I am not going to let the bastards win,” he said.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson prior to the State of the State address on Jan. 24, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri taxpayers will not cover the costs of damages that may result from defamation lawsuits filed against three state senators who incorrectly identified a Kansas man as the shooter at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, Gov. Mike Parson said Monday.

In a letter to the commissioner of the Office of Administration, the state agency that certifies payments from Missouri’s legal expense fund, Parson wrote that no payments related to the lawsuits should be certified “without my approval or a court order.”

“I cannot justify money spent in this way,” Parson wrote.

A spokesman for the Office of Administration said the agency will “comply with the governor’s directive and Missouri law.”

Last month, Denton Loudermill filed a federal lawsuit against GOP state Sens. Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer over posts they made on social media accusing him of being an undocumented immigrant and the shooter at the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade. 

Loudermill was born in Kansas and was not involved in the shooting. 

The three senators are being represented by Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose office argues they were acting in their official capacity when they made their posts on social media.

Parson, who appointed Bailey attorney general in 2022, decried Bailey’s decision to use taxpayer resources to defend the senators, telling reporters last week that “ you don’t get a free pass just because you’re a politician.”

In his Monday letter, Parson hammered that point home, writing that the senators “falsely accused an American citizen of a heinous act and related it to his immigration status.” 

Missourians, Parson wrote, “should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media.”

Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokesperson, said in an email to The Independent: “Attorney General Bailey is following the law as written. Ultimately, the court will decide this issue.”

Parson’s refusal to pay any potential damages awarded to Loudermill would not be the first time the Office of Administration has blocked payment of a controversial legal expense.  

In 2018, shortly after then-Gov. Eric Greitens resigned from office, the agency refused to pay the $180,000 in fees to private attorneys who represented him during impeachment proceedings. The state argued the primary beneficiary of the lawyers’ work was Greitens individually and that the attorneys weren’t needed for the governor’s office itself.

The latest legal saga began when an anonymous account on Twitter accused Loudermill of being the shooter at the Chiefs parade and in the country illegally  That post, with a seated photo of Loudermill in handcuffs, incorrectly identified him with a name associated with misinformation posted after other shootings, including an October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 dead. 

In reality, Loudermill was only detained briefly by police when violence broke out during the parade because he was too slow to leave the area.

Soon after that initial post, the Missouri Freedom Caucus, Hoskins, Brattin and Schroer posted their own versions on Twitter.

“These are 3 people arrested at the parade…at least one of those arrested is an illegal immigrant. CLOSE OUR BORDERS!” the Missouri Freedom Caucus posted. 

The post has since been deleted. The Missouri Freedom Caucus also sought to retract its mistake, linking to a KMBC post about Loudermill’s effort to clear his name.

“Denton is an Olathe native, a father of three & a proud @Chiefs fan,” the post states. “He’s not a mass shooter. Images of him being detained for being intoxicated & not moving away from the crime scene at the Chiefs rally have spread online. He just wants to clear his name.”

Hoskins’ version shared a screenshot of the initial anonymous post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted anonymous post that kicked everything off.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, right, testifies to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 6, 2024 (Rudi Keller/MIssouri Independent).

School districts in Jackson County saw home property assessments leap by nearly a third — and add more heft to their tax bases.

They set their property tax rates lower to reflect the beefier assessments — amid a furor from homeowners and politicians contending the numbers inflated the real value of properties in the county.

That tossed Jackson County into the center of a court challenge from the state that could test who can challenge assessments and how.

Meanwhile, those schools? And other entities that get tax money such as police, fire departments, libraries, mental health services?

School districts in the county claimed in court this week that a win for the homeowners would prove “catastrophic,” costing school districts nearly $1,500 per student.

“That’s not fair to the school districts, the fire protection districts, the libraries,” said Joe Hatley, an attorney representing the Lee’s Summit School District.

It looks most likely that those taxing districts won’t take a hit — a lawsuit demanding that  nearly all the new assessments be erased faces steep odds. Meanwhile, any rebate for homeowners wouldn’t arrive for months at the earliest.

The lawsuit filed by the Missouri State Tax Commission and Attorney General Andrew Bailey contends property owners didn’t get a fair shot to challenge such dramatic increases in their assessments.

The Missouri Supreme Court threw out a similar class-action lawsuit last year. In that case, the court concluded that homeowners couldn’t sue if they didn’t appeal their property assessments with the county first.

That earlier lawsuit sought to reverse all of the assessments that increased more than 15% or didn’t get a mailed notice of the change. But most of the cases had not gone through the usual appeals. Likewise this year, the state wants to throw out all the new assessments that increased any amount.

That means Bailey is testing the limits of a fresh precedent from the high court. Bailey’s case differs by arguing that there is no fair way for homeowners to challenge assessments. That case has its next court date on June 6.

The Missouri Supreme Court has said no before 

Bailey has used his office aggressively in pursuit of conservative causes with mixed success — pushing to ban gender-affirming care, abortion and federal student loan relief.

Now the Republican is stretching the scope of the attorney general’s office by stepping into an intra-county dispute between taxpayers and their local government.

Mike Ardis, a spokesman for the International Association of Assessing Officers, said he was unfamiliar with any case where a state has tried to void an entire county’s assessment increases.

“We’re not familiar … with a similar situation where a state has tried to void a county’s reassessment,” he said in an email.

Before going to court, property owners can challenge an assessment with the county’s Board of Equalization. If they strike out there, they can appeal to the State Tax Commission.

If their case fails with that state commission, they can sue.

What’s different with these lawsuits is that the attorney general is suing on behalf of all property owners whose assessments increased — even if they didn’t appeal.

Bailey argues that homeowners can go to court before taking a case to the State Tax Commission because the appeal process doesn’t give homeowners a fair shot.

Jackson County’s lawyers counter that if homeowners never tried to appeal, they don’t have the right to sue. Some homeowners have challenged through the county and the state, but the lawsuit calls for undoing all 247,500 property assessments that went up. That includes 190,000-plus that were never appealed.

Last June, a group of property owners filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the county botched the assessment and appeal process.

The Missouri Supreme Court dismissed their lawsuit using the same reasoning the county’s lawyers push now — that the homeowners hadn’t finished appealing their assessments.

Most states, including Missouri, can order reassessments, Ardis said, “but that is usually because an assessment hasn’t been done rather than on questions about a reassessment.”

Jackson County argues the State Tax Commission can compel Jackson County to redo its assessments without going to court. The county was told by that same commission in 2018 to bring all of its 301,000 properties up to market value because it wasn’t complying with state law.

But the State Tax Commission hasn’t ordered the county to take action on the 2023 assessments. It could sue a county for not following such an order.

‘Catastrophic’: School districts stand to lose millions of dollars

If the attorney general’s lawsuit is successful, Jackson County’s taxing jurisdictions will be forced to refund millions of dollars to homeowners.

The Fort Osage, Oak Grove, Independence and Lee’s Summit school districts submitted an amicus brief on May 9 asking the judge to consider the “catastrophic financial harm” of tossing out the higher assessments. It estimated that would mean paying back $57 million in taxes across the four districts, or $1,468 per student.

Lee’s Summit would have to give up $32 million — almost a tenth of its revenue. But that money has already been spent on the 2023-24 school year.

“The school districts budget for the fact that there will be some successful challenges to the county’s assessments,” the brief says, “but not for an illegal rollback of assessments on virtually every property in the county.”

For Lee’s Summit, that amount is nearly a third of its reserve. It would take years to recover, and in the meantime, the district would be in a precarious position.

“It would require an immense juggling act on the part of the district’s business staff to figure out what to do,” Hatley said. “You’re not going to dig out of that hole anytime soon.”

Housing costs are continuing to rise

The 30% spike in property values that Jackson County residents saw last year appears consistent with the rise in home sale prices. Tech real estate company Zillow says home values in Jackson County have increased by 45% since March 2020.

“There are parts of the county that we’re still trying to get to value … but I would say the majority of what is driving up these values right now is simply an increase in value,” Jackson County’s director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty told The Beacon in April 2023.

At the time, she said that home values have been increasing 14% to 15% every year since the housing market recovered from the pandemic.

Remote work has made the Midwest more appealing for people who previously needed to live in high-cost cities like New York City or Los Angeles. Since 2020, those workers have been able to relocate to Kansas City.

Additionally, corporations have been buying up Kansas City homes to add to their investment portfolios and renting them out. That has shrunk the number of homes for sale and made the market more expensive.

If a judge tells Jackson County to throw out all assessment increases, that will temporarily reduce property values for the 2023 tax year. But unless the county can get the housing market under control, market value will continue to increase and property owners will see their assessments spike once again in 2025.

So even if taxpayers get a property tax refund for 2023, that relief could be short-lived.

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

(Getty Images).

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Missouri’s social services agency violated the law in the way it has administered its food assistance program. 

U.S. District Court Judge M. Douglas Harpool ruled that the state’s practices — including long call center wait times and a lack of accommodations for those with disabilities — violate the laws governing the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Missouri Department of Social Services’ call center issues ultimately denied eligible Missourians meaningful access to benefits.

“While call wait times fluctuate and have shown some improvement, the record demonstrates too little progress,” Harpool wrote. “Consequently, Missourians who suffer food insecurity have been forced to either go hungry or seek alternative sources of food when their applications are denied.”

In February 2022, a federal lawsuit was filed against the social services department arguing the state’s “dysfunctional” call center deprives eligible Missourians of SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps. 

‘Broken system’: Call center backlogs impede Missouri families seeking food assistance

Plaintiffs described subsisting on little food while using up prepaid phone minutes waiting on hold for an interview, and, due to disability, struggling to understand the application forms but being unable to get through the call center for help.

An interview is required to sign up for or recertify SNAP benefits.

Without interviews, SNAP applications and renewals are automatically denied after 30 days — even if applicants have tried and been unable to get through. Around half of all SNAP denials in the state are due to failure to complete an interview, according to data obtained in litigation. The average call center wait time for the SNAP interview line, as of late last year, The Independent found, was over an hour.

“The high percentage of denials based on failure to interview is a direct consequence of the failed administration of defendant’s SNAP program,” Harpool wrote in his order. 

“These denials are not based on the applicant’s eligibility but on the inadequacies of [the Department of Social Services’] process,” he wrote.

The lawsuit was filed by New York-based National Center for Law and Economic Justice, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and Stinson LLP, on behalf of individual low-income Missourians and the advocacy group Empower Missouri.

“Today’s decision is a vindication of the rights of Missourians,” said Katharine Deabler-Meadows, attorney with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

“The Court has recognized the immense harm that DSS is causing to people who depend on SNAP to feed themselves and their families,” she said. “We are excited that DSS will now have to implement systems that ensure all Missourians can access SNAP.”

The decision orders the social services agency to come into compliance with federal SNAP law and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and outlines several steps the agency must take, under the court’s supervision. 

The steps the state must follow, as outlined in the order include: 

•  submitting a report with specific changes it will make to comply with the law within 30 days;
• filing monthly reports with the court with detailed data on SNAP applications and wait times, and filing that report with several members of Missouri state government outlined in the order;
• submitting a proposed plan of action and timeline of implementation “to address shortcomings in the administration of SNAP as identified” within 90 days, including a reduction in call wait times and denials based on failure to receive an interview and compliance with the ADA. 

After the state complies with the order, the court “will determine what, if any, further actions, orders, remedies, or proceedings are appropriate,” Harpool wrote. 

Harpool has been candid in previous hearings about his concerns over the state’s progress since the lawsuit was first filed.

“I continue to be amazed that it’s been since this case started,” he said in a January motion hearing, “that the state’s whole focus is how can we avoid liability rather than how can we get these benefits to our citizens.”

Hardin Haynes, the attorney representing DSS, rejected that characterization, according to court transcripts.

“The whole time this has been going on,” he said in the January hearing, “DSS has been doing what it can to increase its ability to do interviews throughout this process. That has never stopped.” 

A spokesperson for the Department of Social Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DSS has previously said it is doing all it can to hire more staff,  grant overtime, move to automate assistance and contract with private call centers. 

Agency leaders pointed to resource issues and challenges getting more staff as it requested $4 million this year for a “call center bot” to increase automation and reduce the need for staff on the general call center line.

A Robust Cannabis employee showcases the company's Black Hole Sun strain at their warehouse in Cuba, Missouri (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

A judge in St. Louis ruled Thursday that local municipalities can stack sales taxes on marijuana dispensaries, the first court ruling on a much-debated issue playing out around the state. 

The lawsuit was filed by Robust Missouri 3 LLC. The company saw its Florissant dispensary’s tax rate on cannabis products rise to 14.988% after both the city and St. Louis County approved 3% sales taxes on adult-use marijuana in April 2023.

The constitutional amendment that legalized recreational cannabis sales included a 6% statewide excise tax — but it also authorized “any local government” to charge a sales tax of up to 3%. 

At the heart of Robust’s lawsuit is whether the law intended for local governments to be able to impose a maximum of 3% sales combined, or if they can each impose a 3% sales tax. 

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May ruled that both governments’ taxes are valid. 

In his Thursday order, May stated there is no court precedent on this issue, so he interpreted the intent of the law “as a whole and not in isolated parts.”

Pair of lawsuits challenge whether Missouri counties can ‘stack’ tax on marijuana sales

While the law allows for recreational marijuana to be legal, he stated it also intended for local governments to be able to “protect public health.” 

“If [Robust’s] interpretation were accepted, then a municipality or city would essentially be given carte blanche to ignore any county ordinance or regulation, including those related to public health and safety wholly unrelated to the taxing issue,” May wrote in the ruling. 

May pointed to the provision that allows the city to approve placing a dispensary within less than 1,000 feet of any then-existing school. 

“…and the county, and other cities in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, would have no say in that decision,” May wrote. “This absurd outcome would directly contradict the stated purpose of the [amendment].”

The ruling is a win for the Missouri Association of Counties, said Steve Hobbs, the association’s executive director. The association has strongly advocated that counties have the ability to do this, he said.

“The bulk of the counties around the state had gone to the voters and asked them to implement this tax,” Hobbs told The Independent on Friday. “And I think every one of them approved of it. I think [the ruling] removes some uncertainty from those counties.” 

On the other side, leaders of the marijuana industry have called the effort to collect both taxes an “unconstitutional money grab” that violates the terms of the amendment.

“We know from other states that when legal marijuana is taxed unnecessarily high, it only helps the illicit market,” said Andrew Mullins, executive director Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, in a statement to The Independent Friday, “which deprives Missouri veterans and substance abuse programs of needed revenue.” 

Robust Missouri has submitted an appeal on the circuit court’s decision. Another similar case is pending in Buchanan County.

St. Joseph dispensary Vertical Enterprises sued Buchanan County Collector Peggy Campbell, arguing that it, too, would be “irreparably harmed” if both taxes were imposed.

A hearing is scheduled in that case for May 16 in the Circuit Court of Buchanan County.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Republican state senators facing a federal defamation lawsuit over social media posts incorrectly identifying a Kansas man as the shooter at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade will be represented by the Missouri attorney general’s office. 

Jeremiah Morgan, a deputy attorney general, is listed in court documents as the attorney for state Sen. Rick Brattin, who along with two other members of the Missouri Freedom Caucus — Sens. Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer — were sued last month over posts on social media misidentifying Denton Loudermill of Olathe, Kansas, as an undocumented immigrant and the shooter at the Chief’s parade.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Andrew Bailey confirmed all three senators are being represented by the state.

The attorney general’s role in the lawsuits was first reported Thursday evening by Missouri Scout. 

The defamation lawsuits should be dismissed, the attorney general’s office contends in a motion filed Thursday, because the senators were acting in their official capacity when they made their posts on social media. Therefore, they are protected by “legislative immunity.” The posts falsely claiming Loudermill was an undocumented immigrant were directed at the president, the attorney general’s office argues, and referred to border security. 

State legislators “should not be inhibited by judicial interference or distorted by the fear of personal liability when they publicly speak on issues of national importance,” the motion to dismiss states. 

In an affidavit, Brattin attests that he made the social media posts “while I was engaged in my regular duties as a Missouri State Senator.”

Three Missouri state senators sued for defamation over posts about Chiefs parade shooting

Loudermill was detained briefly when violence broke out during the parade because he was too slow to leave the area.

The first social media account to accuse Loudermill of being the shooter and in the country illegally was on an account on X, formally known as Twitter, with the name Deep Truth Intel. That post, with a seated photo of Loudermill in handcuffs, incorrectly identified him with a name associated with misinformation posted after other shootings, including an October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 dead. 

Soon after that initial social media post, the Missouri Freedom Caucus, Hoskins, Brattin and Schroer posted their own versions.

“These are 3 people arrested at the parade…at least one of those arrested is an illegal immigrant. CLOSE OUR BORDERS!” the Missouri Freedom Caucus posted on X. 

The post has since been deleted. The Missouri Freedom Caucus also sought to retract its mistake, linking to a KMBC post about Loudermill’s effort to clear his name.

“Denton is an Olathe native, a father of three & a proud @Chiefs fan,” the post states. “He’s not a mass shooter. Images of him being detained for being intoxicated & not moving away from the crime scene at the Chiefs rally have spread online. He just wants to clear his name.”

Hoskins’ version on X shared a screenshot of the Deep Truth Intel post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted Deep Truth Intel post.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote on X. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

The State Board of Education voted to revoke a Kansas City school's charter, prompting a legal battle last fought in Missouri's western district court of appeals (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A Kansas City charter school for at-risk students will be allowed to stay open after an appeal of the state’s decision to revoke its charter.

In a ruling issued last week, the presiding judge of Missouri’s western district court of appeals ruled a charter school has the right to judicial review if the state attempts to shut it down.

The case comes after the State Board of Education and the Missouri Charter Public School Commission pulled the charter of Kansas City’s Genesis School last year, citing poor performance.

The appeals court decision, which follows a Cole County judge’s earlier ruling in favor of Genesis, rejects the State Board of Education’s argument that the board has final authority over a charter’s status.

Mallory McGowin, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), said the department is looking at the ruling for potential procedural changes. Otherwise, she said, the State Board of Education’s role will remain as it is now and continue making decisions about charters.

“The charter model is designed to allow for flexibility to promote innovative approaches to educating students, along with a timely closure when low-performing charter schools fail to meet the academic standards outlined in statute,” she said. “The State Board’s role in this process is critical.”

McGowin could not comment on whether the department planned to appeal the decision.

The original case in Cole County reversed the charter revocation. The State Board of Education’s argument in appellate court was that a 2012 change to the law governing charter schools prevents them from seeking judicial review but it did not challenge the underlying argument.

During the original Cole County hearing, Genesis’s attorneys argued that the state didn’t have enough consecutive years of performance data to justify closing the school.

When the Missouri Charter Public School Commission met to consider the charter early in 2023, the latest performance data was from the 2017-18 school year.

The commission became Genesis’s sponsor in July of 2022 after the State Board of Education removed the University of Missouri’s ability to sponsor Genesis and other low-performing charters. 

In April of 2023, the State Board of Education heard Genesis’s appeal. Genesis, a K-8 school with a focus on high-risk students, had low performance scores and average growth, according to an assessment released a month before that hearing. 

The school had earned 42.7% on the new annual performance report. The department told school districts the scores, which were calculated under a new system, would not affect accreditation.

The Cole County judge ultimately determined the state’s decision to pull Genesis’ charter was “unlawful and arbitrary” because of the lack of data.

In the appeals court ruling, the judge wrote that Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven noted “deficiencies” in the charter commission’s process. Still, the board made the decision to revoke Genesis’s charter.

The state education department had concerns with the Missouri Charter Public School Commission’s revocation process, McGowin said, but it had “even more significant concerns with allowing a school with long-term, chronic performance issues to remain open, particularly in the face of the educational uncertainty its attending families were facing in planning for the coming school year.” 

Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing Genesis, told The Independent that the case is not likely to change the oversight of charter schools beyond allowing them to appeal administrative decisions.

“The issue the Court of Appeals decided was just whether a charter school has standing, but the underlying problem is they didn’t have [performance] data because of COVID,” he said. “So I can’t imagine that’s gonna happen again.”

For Kevin Foster, executive director of Genesis School, the process was “traumatic.”

“We didn’t find out until July that we were going to be open, and we survived,” he said.

Students were worried, Foster said, about where they were going to attend school, sometimes pulling focus from their schoolwork.

In December, Genesis scored 62% in the newest performance reports from the state’s education department. Kansas City School District scored 66.6%.

Genesis’s score is composed of two factors, performance and continuous improvement, in which the school scored 44% and 92.3%, respectively.

Foster said this illustrates the school’s ability to teach kids who enroll with a lower knowledge base than students in other areas and schools.

Genesis is located in Census Tract 60, an area where around 5% of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree and 31% are below the poverty line. Foster told The Independent that 81% of his students live within three miles of the school.

All the students at Genesis are eligible for free or reduced lunch, compared to a statewide rate of 47.4%.

The school markets itself for these students, setting itself as a space for a high-risk population. Foster said the state’s system of accountability deters charter schools like this.

“The accountability system is not designed to encourage people to do this work,” he said. “Not only is it not designed to encourage me to do this work, but now they are literally trying to close us, to take away our ability to do the work.”

The school’s charter will be up for renewal in 2025. Foster hopes a sponsor will continue to partner with Genesis.

“People just have a model of what reform is gonna look like, and a small little community charter school serving an at-risk population just doesn’t fit their model,” he said.

Hatfield said the state’s accountability program may continue to impact charter schools that serve high-risk students.

“That’s a real challenge for the way DESE does their (Missouri School Improvement Program) standards these days,” he said. “The schools that are really focused on highly challenged children, they are going to close a lot of them down if they are not more thoughtful about it.”

The Missouri Charter Public School Commission could not be reached for comment.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump appears ahead of the start of jury selection at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 15, 2024 in New York City. Former President Donald Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial (Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images).

Former President Donald Trump defied a gag order in his New York state hush-money trial by posting attacks on likely witnesses on his social media platform and campaign website, the judge in the case ruled Tuesday.

Judge Juan M. Merchan fined Trump $9,000 for nine violations of an order barring him from making public statements about “reasonably foreseeable witnesses” or prospective jurors in the case, in which Trump is accused of disguising payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged affair.

Merchan also ordered the offending posts to be taken down by 2:15 p.m. Eastern Tuesday.

Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, had posted to his social media site, Truth Social, and to his campaign website comments about Daniels and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, who prosecutors say delivered a $130,000 payment to Daniels.

Cohen and Daniels are expected to testify for the prosecution in the criminal trial, the first involving a former U.S. president.

Trump did not deny posting any of the items, but said they were in response to political attacks by Cohen and Daniels. Merchan’s order allowed Trump to respond to political attacks.

Prosecutors had asked Merchan to fine Trump for 10 statements, but the judge gave Trump a pass on the first post in question, which Merchan said could be interpreted as a response to tweets from Cohen that could be considered political attacks.

Merchan said Tuesday he was broadly interpreting political attacks out of deference to Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, which he said was especially important as Trump runs again for the White House.

“It is critically important that Defendant’s legitimate free speech rights not be curtailed, that he be able to fully campaign for the office which he seeks and that he be able to respond and defend himself against political attacks,” Merchan wrote. “For that reason, this Court exercised discretion when it crafted the Expanded Order and delayed issuing it until the eve of trial.”

Reposts as endorsements

Trump also argued that “reposts” from other accounts should not count as his own speech.

Merchan roundly rejected that argument, noting Trump has bragged about the size of his audience on Truth Social and fully controlled its content.

“There can be no doubt whatsoever, that Defendant’s intent and purpose when reposting, is to communicate to his audience that he endorses and adopts the posted statement as his own,” Merchan said. “It is counterintuitive and indeed absurd, to read the Expanded Order to not proscribe statements that Defendant intentionally selected and published to maximize exposure.”

Tuesday’s order also warns Trump “that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations” of the gag order and warned that Merchan may impose jail time for further violations.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is the ranking minority member on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, told reporters in Washington Tuesday that he did not expect the ruling to lead Trump to change his behavior.

“I don’t think he’ll take it seriously, unless he’s going to be held overnight or something like that,” Raskin said. “He acts with utter contempt towards the rule of law.”

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, was the lead impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment, which dealt with the then-president’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Raskin also was a member of the House Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The trial resumed Tuesday with testimony from Gary Farro, a former banker of Cohen’s, after a break Monday.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

CAPTION: Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, while the justices heard arguments about whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution on criminal charges related to his actions while in office (Jane Norman/States Newsroom).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Thursday of former President Donald Trump’s argument he is immune from criminal charges that he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But conservatives who dominate the court appeared open to returning key questions to a trial court, possibly delaying Trump’s prosecution beyond the November election — and essentially assisting the former president as he fights legal challenges on multiple fronts.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has argued in a federal trial court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that his actions following the 2020 election and leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, were “official acts” conducted while still in office and therefore are not subject to criminal prosecution.

While court precedent establishes that U.S. presidents are immune to civil damages for their official acts, and to criminal prosecution while in office, the justices now must decide the unanswered question of whether former presidents are absolutely immune from criminal law.

At oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States, much of the discussion centered on what should be considered an official presidential act.

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, of St. Louis, argued that nearly everything a president does in office — including hypotheticals about ordering a military coup or assassinating a political rival — could be considered official acts.

While much of the court appeared skeptical of that broad view of official acts, several justices on the conservative wing asked about having the trial court determine what acts should be considered official. They also suggested prosecutors could drop sections of the four-count indictment against Trump that dealt with official acts.

The court’s three liberal justices voiced serious concerns about Trump’s immunity argument, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wondering aloud if the court accepting a broad view of criminal immunity for the president would make the Oval Office “the seat of criminal activity.”

The case is one of four in state and federal courts in which criminal charges have been made against Trump. On Thursday, he was in a New York state courtroom where he faces charges in an ongoing hush-money trial; the judge there did not allow him to attend the Supreme Court arguments.

Conservative justices asked if they could avoid the constitutional question by having the trial court, presided over by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, determine which parts of the allegations could be considered official or unofficial acts.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors have indicated that prosecuting only Trump’s private conduct would be sufficient, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.

“The normal process, what Mr. Sauer asked, would be for us to remand if we decided that there were some official acts immunity, and to let that be sorted out below,” Barrett said, referring to a process in which a case is sent back to a lower court. “It is another option for the special counsel to just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”

‘Absolute immunity’

Sauer argued, as he has for months, for “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for presidents acting in their official capacity.

No president who has not been impeached and removed from office can be prosecuted for official actions, Sauer said, broadly interpreting the meaning of official acts.

Liberal justices questioned Sauer about how far his definition of official acts would stretch. Trump’s attorney was reluctant to list any exceptions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked a hypothetical that arose in a lower court: Would it be an official act for the president to order the assassination of a political rival?

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer answered.

He also answered Justice Elena Kagan that it could be an official act for a president to order a military coup, though Sauer said “it would depend on the circumstances.”

Michael R. Dreeben, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that Trump’s broad view of presidential immunity would break a fundamental element of U.S. democracy, that no one is above the law.

“His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power,” Dreeben said.

Jackson, questioning Sauer, appeared to agree with that argument.

She said Sauer appeared worried that the president would be “chilled” by potential criminal prosecution, but she said there would be “a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn’t chilled.”

“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.

‘A special, peculiarly precarious position’

But other members of the court appeared more amenable to Sauer’s argument that subjecting presidents to criminal prosecution would constrain them.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, asked Dreeben about Trump’s argument that a president’s duties require a broad view of immunity.

The president has to make difficult decisions, sometimes in areas of law that are unsettled, Alito said.

“I understand you to say, ‘If he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he’s subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else,’” Alito said. “You don’t think he’s in a special, peculiarly precarious position?”

Dreeben answered that the president has access to highly qualified legal advice and that making a mistake is not what generally leads to criminal prosecution.

He also noted that the allegations against Trump involve him going beyond his powers as president to interfere with the certification of an election, which is not a presidential power in the Constitution.

Protesters gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, while justices hear oral arguments about whether federal law protects emergency abortion care (Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom).

U.S. Supreme Court justices spent two hours Wednesday debating whether a federal law about emergency treatment encompasses abortion care even in states with strict abortion bans, with no clear indication of how they may ultimately rule.

A decision could come as soon as the end of June to decide whether Idaho’s near-total abortion ban means doctors who might need to terminate a pregnancy during a health emergency would be protected from prosecution under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients who come to an emergency room regardless of their ability to pay.

If the court decides it does not provide that protection, then hospitals and doctors in Idaho have said they will have to continue transferring patients out of state for that treatment.

Since January, when the court decided to take the case and struck down an injunction that provided protection under EMTALA, the number of transfers out of state for pregnancy complications that may require termination has increased from one in 2023 to six over the course of four months.

The arguments began with aggressive questioning of Idaho Deputy Attorney General Josh Turner by the court’s more liberal justices, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Their questions revolved around what EMTALA, which was signed into law in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, explicitly says about stabilizing treatment and whether abortion procedures fall into that definition when complications occur before a fetus can survive outside of the womb, even with medical intervention.

Turner argued that Idaho’s law should supersede federal law in the case of abortion procedures because if a treatment isn’t available based on a state law, then it is in conflict with EMTALA and the federal law doesn’t apply, even if it goes against commonly accepted medical care standards.

Sotomayor rejected that argument.

“There is no state licensing law that would permit the state to say, ‘Don’t treat diabetics with insulin. Treat them only with pills,’” Sotomayor said. “Federal law would say you can’t do that.”

She said federal law requires treatment of a person who is at risk of serious medical complications without that treatment, but Idaho’s law does not provide that much leeway.

“Idaho law says the doctor has to determine not that there’s really a serious medical condition, but that the person will die. That’s a huge difference, counsel,” she said.

Idaho’s abortion ban went into effect in August 2022, a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protection for abortion access and allowing states to regulate it instead.

Providers who are prosecuted for performing an abortion are subject to two to five years in prison plus the loss of their medical license, and they are also subject to civil enforcement laws by any family members related to the person who had the abortion.

Conscience objections, expansion of ‘emergency’ definition 

The more conservative justices offered mixed questions to U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who argued on behalf of the government.

Justice Neil Gorsuch posed questions related to the federal Supremacy Clause about when federal law can override state law in the context of medicine, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked about whether conscience exceptions exist for doctors who don’t feel comfortable terminating a pregnancy even in emergency situations.

Or if a hospital in general did not want to provide the procedure, such as a Catholic hospital, would be exempt under EMTALA for conscience reasons. One of Idaho’s largest hospital systems, Saint Alphonsus, is a Catholic hospital.

Prelogar confirmed that yes, individual doctors and entire medical entities qualify for those conscience objections and are therefore not required to perform an abortion under EMTALA. But at a hospital that did not have a blanket objection, they would take individual objections into consideration for appropriate staffing so that there is always someone available to provide that care if necessary.

“If the question is, could you force an individual doctor to step in over a conscience objection, the answer is no, and I want to be really clear about that,” Prelogar said.

Justice Sam Alito also asked Prelogar if EMTALA could be understood to apply to other emergency situations such as a mental health emergency, if someone was expressing suicidal thoughts and wanted to end their pregnancy to resolve those thoughts. Idaho’s legal representation, conservative religious law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, argued in its brief to the court that a ruling in favor of EMTALA protection would allow such situations to occur. Prelogar said no, the proper treatment would be to administer medications to alleviate the suicidal thoughts.

“There can be grave mental health emergencies, but EMTALA could never require pregnancy termination as the stabilizing care … because that wouldn’t do anything to address the underlying brain chemistry issue that’s causing the mental health emergency in the first place,” Prelogar said. “If she happens to be pregnant, it would be incredibly unethical to terminate her pregnancy. She might not be in a position to give any informed consent.”

The court is expected to rule in the case by the close of its current term, which typically occurs toward the end of June.

A crew from Kansas City Fire Station 19 responded to a call in December 2021 when Dominic Biscari ran a red light and crashed into a car in the intersection and then three parked cars, killing three people. The city hopes to overturn an arbitration decision that Biscari could only be suspended for three days. The city had said it would seek to fire him. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Kansas City officials are hoping to overturn an arbitrator’s decision that a firefighter who crashed a fire truck and killed three people could only receive a three-day suspension.

On Tuesday, the city of Kansas City filed a motion in Jackson County Circuit Court to vacate an arbitration decision that determined Dominic Biscari could only be suspended for three days after he ran a red light in a fire department pumper truck and crashed into a car in the Westport neighborhood, killing both the driver and passenger. 

Biscari then veered and hit three parked cars, killing a pedestrian and running into a building that ultimately collapsed. He was charged with three felonies, and according to the city, lawsuits by loved ones of the deceased and the building’s owner have cost Kansas City $3.2 million.

After the crash, the city sought to suspend Biscari pending an investigation, citing the three felony charges. The city told him, according to documents filed Tuesday in circuit court, that the suspension would remain in effect until his felony charges were adjudicated. 

But the firefighters’ union, International Association of Firefighters Local 42, filed a grievance against the city, stating it was shocked at the suspension, which it said violated a previous arbitration decision, according to the city’s filing. The decision that Biscari could only be suspended for three days came as a result of that grievance.

According to the city’s petition, the arbitrator reached the decision, which it argues was an overreach, “without any explanation of how he arrived at a three-day suspension,”

“But it amounted to one day for each death and one day for each million dollars that (the) firefighter’s fatality accident cost the city,” the petition says.

Representatives from the union, as well as Biscari’s attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.

In February 2023, roughly 15 months after the crash, Bascari was charged with three felony counts of involuntary manslaughter in the second degree. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation and 40 hours of community service. 

The city notified him of his suspension that same week. Interim Fire Chief Ross Grundyson told the Kansas City Star at the time that the department was suspending Biscari without pay and seeking to terminate his employment.

A few weeks later in March 2023, the union filed its grievance concerning Biscari’s suspension, saying it violated a previous arbitration decision concerning whether suspending firefighters pending an investigation violated their just cause and due process rights. 

The city’s petition emphasizes that the union’s grievance dealt with the suspension — not the investigation of the crash or any ultimate disciplinary action.

The issue went to an arbitrator to determine whether the city had cause to suspend Bascari and whether it gave him due process. The arbitrator decided last month in favor of the union. The decision, however, went beyond the question of whether the suspension was justified, the city argues in its petition. 

“The arbitrator issued discipline on the underlying fatality accident: that (the) firefighter only be suspended for three days and that most references to the underlying fatality accident be removed from his personnel file,” the city’s motion says. The arbitrator also ordered that the city pay Local 42 for its costs in pursuing the grievance. 

In its Tuesday filing, the city says Missouri’s Uniform Arbitration Act requires that a court overturn an arbitration decision if the arbitrator “exceeds their powers,” which the city argues occurred. 

The city repeatedly emphasizes that the arbitrator should have only issued an order on the suspension. It also says its collective bargaining agreement with Local 42 states parties to an arbitration will bear their own costs and that the arbitrator overstepped in awarding the union fees. 

“The city had not found him negligent with respect to the underlying fatality accident and had not fashioned discipline for such a finding were it to occur,” the motion says. “Despite this, the arbitrator took it upon himself to write a prospective cure for a future, hypothetical dispute that was not before him.” 

States that receive federal funding are required to report prison and jail deaths to the U.S. Department of Justice (Darrin Klimek/Getty Images).

The Missouri Department of Corrections must pay more than $60,000 for refusing to give records to a mother trying to find out how her son died in 2021 while in state custody.

And that amount could grow, both because the department lost an appeal of an order finding it violated the Sunshine Law and because the mother is now suing the state for wrongful death in her son’s death by suicide.

The wrongful death lawsuit asserts the department, its officers and contract medical provider were “negligent,  derelict, reckless and in breach of their ministerial duties” in the death of Jahi Hynes.

In a decision delivered Tuesday, the Western District Court of Appeals upheld a trial court judgment that the prison agency committed a “knowing and purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law” to prevent Willa Hynes of St. Louis from learning her son hanged himself with a bedsheet while in solitary confinement.

The department asserted the records were inmate medical records protected from disclosure and its investigation was not a law enforcement investigation as defined in the Sunshine Law. The appeals court rejected the first argument and did not address the second.

“We find there was substantial evidence from which the trial court could have found the DOC acted with the intent to achieve some purpose by violating the Sunshine Law, namely, to hinder Hynes from pursuing a potential civil claim against the DOC relating to her son’s death,” Judge Edward Ardini wrote in the unanimous decision. “Such conduct amounts to a purposeful violation.”

The ruling sets a precedent for the department’s Sunshine Law policies at a time when deaths are increasing in state prisons. Activists for prison reform have tracked deaths and found that deaths have increased by one-third as prison populations fell nearly 25%.

From 2012 to 2014, there was an average of 31,442 incarcerated people in state prisons. Deaths averaged 89 per year. Over the past three years, with an average of 23,409 incarcerated people in state prisons, deaths have averaged 122 per year.

There have been more than 100 deaths in Missouri prisons in five of the last six years.

Michelle Smith, director of the Missouri Justice Coalition, said at a January memorial service for deceased inmates that the department routinely withholds information about deaths from family members.

“We are trying to raise awareness of the fact that hundreds of people die in Missouri prisons every single year and nothing is done,” Smith said at the memorial service.

On April 1, Hynes filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing the department, its contract medical providers and 11 corrections employees of negligence in allowing her son to possess the bedsheet and failing to conduct required checks on inmates in administrative segregation.

The department used every means possible to block access to information about the death, attorney Linda Powers, who represents Hynes, said in an interview with The Independent.

“They are doing death investigations internally without involving outside law enforcement and then skirting the requirements of the Sunshine Law that law enforcement produce investigative records by claiming they are not law enforcement,” Powers said. 

Karen Pojmann, spokeswoman for the corrections department, declined to answer questions about the department’s Sunshine Law practices and if they have changed as a result of Hynes’ lawsuit. She also declined to comment on the wrongful death lawsuit.

“The department doesn’t comment on litigation,” Pojmann wrote in an email.

The Sunshine Law penalty includes a $5,000 fine for the knowing violation and more than $55,000 in attorney fees.

In her request, Hynes asked for all of her son’s records since his incarceration, plus his medical records, the investigative report on his death, and surveillance video of the area where he was in administrative segregation.

All of the material was turned over late last year, but not before Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green issued an order giving the department five days to comply with his judgment in full. That order was issued after Powers asked Green to enforce the judgment and the records were produced only after she sought contempt sanctions because the department had done nothing for four additional weeks.

The investigative report, Powers said, was a document seemingly written to protect the department from liability, not to relate the truth about Jahi Hynes’ death.

“When you look at the evidence and what the video shows, you can determine what happened,” Powers said.

The video and other documents withheld by the corrections department until the court order form the basis of the factual allegations in the lawsuit, Powers said.

Jahi Hynes was sentenced in 2013 in St. Louis Circuit Court to 13 years in prison for first degree robbery. He was 27 when died April 4, 2021, at the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center in Charleston. 

He had a history of mental health problems, the lawsuit states. In September 2020, while housed at South Central Correctional Center in Licking, he spoke with a mental health professional about extreme mood swings and his history of hospitalizations for attempted suicide. He asked to be put back on psychotropic medications he had not been taking since he was incarcerated.

Jahi Hynes was denied the medication and about three months after his transfer to the Southeast Correctional Center, the lawsuit states, he was cited for a “minor assault” for allowing his food port door to strike a correction officer’s hand, causing abrasions.

He was moved to the administrative segregation unit, and placed on restrictions for allowed personal property intended to prevent inmates from harming themselves. On the first day, Hynes was only to be allowed boxer shorts and eyeglasses, receiving pants, a blanket and a mattress the next day and allowed shoes, socks, and bed sheets on the fourth day.

The lawsuit states that department regulations require checks at least every 30 minutes on inmates in solitary confinement. There were periods of more than five hours where no checks were made, the video surveillance shows, according to the lawsuit.

The surveillance video also shows the ease at which prisoners cut off from contact with other inmates can trade items on strings run from cell to cell in a system called “cadillacing.” 

While he wasn’t supposed to have pants, the video shows an inmate working as a porter giving him a pair of sweatpants taken from Hynes and placed on a hook outside the cell just four hours after being placed in the cell.

One inmate gave Hynes a bedsheet via the cadillacing system and another gave him a T-shirt. The system is elaborate enough to transfer items from one side of the prison wing to the other and from one floor to another.

“From approximately 11:09 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. (April 4), in plain view of the cameras, using the line secured by the offender, the inmates cadillaced items from one side of C-Wing to the other four times,” the lawsuit states.

At 3:26 p.m., Jahi Hynes was found hanging in his cell, from the bedsheet he had received from the other prisoner, wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants. A corrections officer had done a cell check about a half-hour earlier and seen Hynes had the prohibited items.

“None of the defendant correction officers removed the t-shirt, pants or bed sheets that were cadillaced to decedent from decedent’s cell, despite orders mandating that they do so,” the lawsuit states.

The delays in receiving the information compounded Willa Hynes grief over the death of her son, Powers said.

“It is unconscionable,” she said. “Ms. Hynes went two-and-a-half years wondering what happened to her son.”

Washington Metropolitan Police body camera footage shows Joseph W. Fischer in the U.S. Capitol at 3:25 p.m. Eastern on Jan. 6, 2021 (U.S. District Court documents).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a Jan. 6, 2021, case that could potentially upend convictions for a mass of Capitol riot defendants and slash some election interference charges against former President Donald Trump.

The case, Fischer v. United States, centers on whether former Pennsylvania police officer and Jan. 6 defendant Joseph W. Fischer violated an obstruction statute when he joined the mob that entered the U.S. Capitol and prevented Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results for several hours.

The justices, appearing split and at times opaque in their individual stances, questioned Fischer’s attorney Jeffrey Green and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar for more than 90 minutes, though they grilled Prelogar for twice as long as Green.

“We thought it went about as well as it could, but we still think it will be a very close case,” Green told States Newsroom outside the court following arguments.

The provision in question stems from an early 2000s law, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, that passed after the Enron accounting scandal and targets “whoever corruptly … otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

In this particular case, the proceeding is referring to the joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 presidential election results.

The government maintains that Fischer had an intent to disrupt the proceeding, and points to his text messages in the preceding days that discuss stopping the democratic process and committing physical harm of Congress members.

The Justice Department also maintains video evidence shows Fischer assaulting a police officer and encouraging rioters to “charge” into the Capitol.

Fischer’s team argues that he wasn’t present while Congress was meeting, and that he only had a “four-minute foray to about 20 feet inside the Capitol.”

A lower trial court last year granted Fischer’s motion to dismiss the felony charge against him after he argued the clause is inseparable from preceding language that refers only to tampering with physical evidence.

The U.S. Circuit of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed the ruling, though the three-judge panel split. Judge Florence Y. Pan wrote in the lead opinion that the statute is “unambiguous” in its meaning of what constitutes obstructing an official proceeding.

Roughly 350 Jan. 6 defendants have been charged under the same statute, and about 50 have been sentenced, according to Prelogar.

The clause in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act is also at the core of two of the four election subversion charges brought against Trump by U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith.

Whether those charges stand now hangs on whether the justices agree that the law applies to Fischer’s actions at the U.S Capitol.

If the justices rule in Fischer’s favor, Trump would almost certainly challenge the government’s case, further delaying an already drawn out legal process as the 2024 presidential election inches closer.

Additionally, numerous Jan. 6 defendants convicted of the charge, among the most serious levied against them, could challenge and potentially re-open their cases.

A ruling is expected in late June or early July.

This developing story will be updated.

Advocates for protections for survivors of childhood sexual abuse speak in front of the Missouri Supreme Court building prior to delivering a letter to the Missouri Attorney General (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A group including survivors of childhood sexual abuse is hoping Missouri lawmakers will change state law to give victims more time to sue their assailants and that the attorney general will provide more oversight of boarding schools and camps.

Douglas Lay, assistant director of Missouri Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters Monday afternoon that he was abused at school as a child and didn’t tell his story for 40 years.

“The trauma is sufficient enough to stay silent,” he said alongside survivors and advocates outside the Missouri Supreme Court building.

Monday, he testified in a Missouri Senate committee in favor of extending the statute of limitations to give survivors more time to share. In town for the committee hearing, the group also delivered a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey demanding he begin investigating camps and boarding schools that have been accused of abuse.

The committee held a hearing Monday on a bill that would place  a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot to make the time limits for filing a civil action the same as it is for criminal prosecutions.

Currently, survivors of childhood sexual abuse can file a civil suit against perpetrators until they reach the age of 31 and against other defendants until the age of 26. There is no statute of limitations for criminal cases of rape.

A similar bill last year sought to allow survivors to file a claim until they reach 55 years old. 

Versions of the bill have yet to clear a committee in either the House or Senate, and with the legislative session ending May 17, their odds of passing are slim.

Kathryn Robb, executive director of nonprofit child-protection advocacy group CHILD USAdvocacy, said the statute of limitations is “arbitrary.”

“When the perpetrators silence the victims, they should not benefit from the statute of limitations that cuts (lawsuits) off,” she said. “It is just bad policy.”

Richard AuBuchon, executive director of the Missouri Civil Justice Reform, testified to the Senate  committee he believes there should be “finality” to cases.

“There should be fair process, like we do in Missouri, where the statute of limitations creates a constitutional right that the case is final,” he said.

Ken Chackes, a St. Louis-based attorney, told reporters he has represented 300 or more survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

“Many survivors told me I was the first person they ever told,” he said.

Some have waited years to share their stories, Chackes said, because they wanted to shield loved ones from pain.

“They don’t want to put their parents through the devastating impact of learning that their child… was abused and suffered this trauma,” he said.

He believes allowing them to bring civil proceedings will allow more people to share their experiences, and in turn, expose abuse.

Agape Boarding School will close its doors this month after years of abuse allegations

Lay and other advocates also delivered a letter to Bailey Monday asking for an investigation of facilities like Agape School in Stockton, Circle of Hope Ranch in Humansville and Kanakuk Kamps in Branson.

Agape has been accused of physical and sexual abuse, including restraint and starvation.

The daughter of the owners of Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch came forward in 2021 with stories of abuse. The facility is now shuttered, and the owners face 100 felony counts under prosecution by the Attorney General’s Office.

Former campers have alleged sexual abuse by a Kanakuk Kamps staffer and concealment of the abuse.