Goldwater Urges Missouri Supreme Court to Enforce Legislative Transparency

Americans deserve to know if their elected leaders are passing laws that affect their lives, which is exactly why Missouri has a constitutional requirement that each bill in the state legislature have a “clear title.” But over the years, the General Assembly has adopted ever-broader bill titles that do not meaningfully tell the public what issues are addressed in the bills. On Wednesday, the Goldwater Institute appeared at the Missouri Supreme Court to argue in favor of legislative transparency to ensure that citizens know what is in the bills their lawmakers are considering.

In Article III Institute v. State of Missouri, the Goldwater Institute is challenging the constitutionality of Senate Bill 754, a massive, 69-page “public safety” bill the legislature passed in 2024. The bill packed together more than two dozen unrelated provisions under the vague, catch-all umbrella title “relating to public safety.” This is precisely the type of bill title Missouri’s constitution prohibits—the “clear title” requirement states that “no bill shall contain more than one subject which shall be clearly expressed in its title.”

Just two years ago the Missouri Supreme Court suggested that “public safety” is a topic too broad and amorphous to comply with the clear title requirement – but it did not resolve that issue because the parties had not raised it. This case directly presents that question, providing a critical test of the lengths to which the state legislature may go in obscuring the substance of a bill.

Dave Roland, Goldwater’s Director of Allied Litigation, argued the case on behalf of Missouri taxpayers and constitutional accountability.

“The General Assembly over the last several years has had more than 2,000 bills introduced every regular session. That is an extraordinary amount of information for legislators and members of the public to process to determine whether there is something in any of these bills that’s averse to their interests,” Roland told the justices during oral arguments. “That’s why it’s so important for the court to enforce the clear title requirement and make sure that it retains substantial meaning.”

“The people adopted this requirement because they recognized that what is expedient for the legislature is not always aligned with their own interests,” Roland added.

This is the ninth state supreme court in which Goldwater attorneys have stood up for individual rights and government transparency and accountability. This was Roland’s ninth Missouri Supreme Court appearance and his first since joining Goldwater in January.

“This court has held that the clear title requirement is mandatory and that courts must not render the requirement meaningless by allowing bills to contain a subject so broad that it would defeat the requirement’s intended purpose,” Roland said. “In keeping with this principle, this court has in several cases struck down bills whose titles were too broad and amorphous to describe the subject of a pending bill with the precision necessary to provide the required notice of its contents. And just two years ago, this court … stated that it had previously found phrases such as ‘relating to public safety’ to be too broad and amorphous to comply with the clear title requirement.”

The Goldwater Institute and the Article III Institute—a Missouri nonprofit focused on legislative accountability—pursued this case because constitutional limitations on government are only useful if someone is willing to fight to see those limitations enforced. Simply put, Missourians deserve transparency when it comes to the bills the General Assembly considers and passes.

Click here to listen to the oral arguments in this case.