Jefferson City – A Cole County Circuit Court Judge issued a ruling denying a request to suspend House Bill 1’s new congressional maps until after the referendum process is complete.
The order departs from over one hundred years of legal precedent dating back to the early 1900’s. Time and time again, courts found and upheld that “the mere lodging of a timely, legal, and sufficient referendum petition with the Secretary of State is all that” must be done to “halt” the “law affected”—“regardless of any affirmative act on the part of the Secretary of State or the Attorney General.”
Previous Secretaries of State and Attorneys General have agreed with the established precedent that referred legislation is suspended upon receipt of the referendum petition. In 2017, then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft announced that Missouri’s so-called right-to-work law was suspended after his office received more than 300,000 signatures, even though the office still needed to verify and issue a certificate.
The ACLU of Missouri issued the following statement:
“This order defies over a century of judicial precedent while rendering Missourians’ constitutional right to the referendum process second to the will of politicians. The ACLU of Missouri is committed to our state constitution’s founding principle that all power is derived from the people, not loaned from the government. We will immediately appeal this decision.”