Constitutional Law: Picketing-Labor Negotiations-Severance

Where dispatchers claimed statutory prohibitions against picketing violated constitutional rights to equal protection, free speech, peaceable assembly and collective bargaining under the Missouri Constitution, and the trial court declared Section 105.585(2) unconstitutional and enjoined the defendants from applying the prohibition against picketing in negotiating any collective bargaining agreement with the plaintiff dispatchers, the judgment is affirmed to the extent that it enjoins the state from prohibiting unobtrusive picketing about matters of public concern in negotiations for a new labor agreement with the relevant union, and severance of the phrase “and picketing of any kind” was appropriate.

Judgment is affirmed.

Karney v. Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (MLW No. 74787/Case No. SC97833 – 15 pages) (Supreme Court of Missouri, Fischer, J.; all concur) Appealed from circuit court, Jackson County, Kanatzar, J. (D. John Sauer and Julie M. Blake, Jefferson City, and Alyssa M. Mayer and Rachel M. Rivers, Kansas City, Missouri, for the state) (Joshua A. Sanders, John B. Boyd, John R. Boyd, Mark E. Parrish, Brianne N. Thomas, Erica Fumagalli and Raymond E. Salva, Independence, for respondents).