Missouri Supreme Court weighs Proposition A’s validity after election challenge

The fate of Proposition A could lie in the hands of the Missouri Supreme Court, after arguments were heard Wednesday about alleged irregularities with the November 2024 ballot measure.

Prop A was approved by voters statewide by a vote of 57.57 percent in November 2024, increasing the state’s minimum wage and establishing new paid sick-leave requirements. After the election results were certified, three registered voters and six nonprofits filed an election contest, alleging irregularities with Prop A’s fiscal note summary and summary statement. The challenges claimed the ballot measure is also invalid because it allegedly violates the Missouri Constitution’s single-subject clause and clear-title requirement.

The proponents of Prop A during the initiative petition process, Jobs with Justice Ballot Fund and Richard bon Glahn, moved to dismiss the challenges. The secretary of state and state auditor also denied the election irregularities claims.

The contestants were represented during arguments by Marc Ellinger of Ellinger Bell in Jefferson City. Robert Tillman of the auditor’s office represented the state auditor, the secretary of state was represented by Andrew Crane of the attorney general’s office and the proponents were represented by Loretta Haggard of Schuchat, Cook & Werner in St. Louis.

Five Missouri business owners also filed a brief as friends of the court, arguing in part that minimum wage and paid sick leave are understood by both business owners and employees as fundamental components of employee compensation packages.

The case was filed as an original election contest proceeding under Missouri statute 115.557, which gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction in post-election challenges to statewide ballot measures. The parties stipulated to the evidence, which was reviewed by a special commissioner who later submitted a report to the court.

It presents several questions, including whether Prop A’s fiscal note summary and summary statement were insufficient and unfair, whether the measure combines multiple subjects in violation of the state constitution and whether such constitutional challenges are even appropriate in an election contest.

Ellinger told the court that voters were mislead by the official ballot title, the fiscal note summary and the summary statement. He contended the ballot title failed to accurately convey the scope of the measure and also violated the constitution’s requirement that a statutory initiative contain “one subject clearly expressed in its title.”

“The function of the court is not to engage in policy and the merits of policy, but to ask whether constitutional requirements of the limits of power as expressed in the procedures elaborated in the constitution have been regarded. This case is an example where all of those procedures have been ignored, and failed to be complied with,” Ellinger said. “On the statutory side and on the constitutional side, voters were misled, the constitution was not complied with, and as a result Proposition A … is not only invalid but had a misleading ballot title.”

Ellinger said the initiative’s sections on minimum wage as well as mandatory paid sick leave could be their own standalone statutory initiatives.
“There’s one paragraph, one statute that deals with minimum wage. There are 15 sections that deal with sick leave,” Ellinger said. “Anyone of those two separately can certainly be a standalone statutory initiative … what you can’t do is put them together.”

Tillman, arguing for the state auditor, countered that the fiscal note summary was not materially inaccurate, and that the $2,000 cost estimate from Clay County was not included in the summary because it was speculative. The contestants to the proposition said it was similar to Quinton Lucas v. Missouri Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft and Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, where the ballot measure was thrown out and revoted due to it initially omitting the $39 million cost estimate from Kansas City. Tillman argued that this case and Lucas differed in scope and geography.

“In Lucas, the initiative and controversy only applied to Kansas City and the summary excluded Kansas City’s submission of approx.. $39 million dollars … here, Proposition A doesn’t only apply to Clay County, meaning its submitted impact was not the most significant impact addressing the note,” Tillman said. “The excluded $2,000 cost is … pales in comparison to Kansas City’s $39 million impact. These are significant differences overlooked by the contestants, and it’s these significant differences that result in the summary not being materially inaccurate.”

Crane, on behalf of the secretary of state, argued the measure’s focus on employee compensation, through wage increase and paid sick leave, constitutes a single subject.

“Central measures of the act at issue are to increase the minimum wage and to … establish a minimum amount of sick leave … those things pretty clearly relate to one subject, which is employee compensation,” Crane said.

The proponents’ attorney, Haggard, argued the case was improperly brought as an election contest, saying the alleged constitutional defects should have been raised in a pre-election challenge or through a declaratory judgment in circuit court.

“The contestants ask this court to overturn the will of the voters … based on technical issues that could have been, but were not, raised before the election” she said. “They present zero evidence that any of the claimed errors had any effect on the election, let alone outcome determinative effect, given a margin of victory of almost 450,000 votes.”

Supreme Court Judge Brent Powell pressed Ellinger on whether a finding of unconstitutionality alone would be enough to invalidate the measure, or whether the court would also have to find any irregularities cast sufficient doubt on the election. Ellinger said the challengers were requesting both: a new election due to a misleading ballot title and, in the alternative, a ruling that the measure is unconstitutional.

Separately, the Missouri House of Representatives advanced a bill that would repeal the paid sick leave portion of Prop A and modify the minimum wage schedule approved by voters.

The case is Raymond McCarty, et al. v. Missouri Secretary of State, et al., Case No. SC100876.