ST. LOUIS — The city of St. Louis and the leader of its city council filed a federal lawsuit Monday against a new Missouri law putting a state-appointed board back in control of the local police department, putting St. Louis among a handful of major U.S. cities that don't fully oversee law enforcement.
The president of the city's Board of Aldermen, Megan Green, argues in the lawsuit that the new law violates her rights to free expression, freedom of assembly and to petition state government, all guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city says the law violates a provision of the Missouri Constitution that prohibits unfunded mandates from the state.
The law, approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe last month, gives the governor the power to appoint four city residents as voting members of a new board to manage the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to serve along with the city's elected mayor, currently Democrat Tishaura Jones. The police department of Kansas City, Missouri, is overseen by such a board.
Some critics suggested that Republican lawmakers wanted to wrest control of the police away from Jones, a Black woman, but Kehoe has said legislators were ''prioritizing public safety.''
The lawsuit alleges that the new law violates Green's rights through vague and overly broad provisions that prohibit city officials from taking any action to ''impede, obstruct or interfere'' with the state board, subjecting them to fines and removal from office. The new law also requires St. Louis to increase its spending on the police department each year through 2028.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is promising to defend the law.
''Rather than waste taxpayer funds in an attempt to defund the police, we would encourage city leaders to focus their efforts on building a safer St. Louis,'' James Lawson, a deputy chief of staff for Bailey, said in an email to The Associated Press.
St. Louis first lost full control over its police department during the Civil War in 1861, when Missouri was sharply divided between Union and Confederate supporters. St. Louis and Kansas City had larger Black populations than other parts of the state and were centers of Union support. A pro-Confederate government persuaded the Legislature to give the state control of the local police.
