Given the COVID-19 outbreak, the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Missouri filed a lawsuit today seeking to make absentee mail-in balloting available to all eligible voters in Missouri. The case was filed on behalf of the NAACP of Missouri, the League of Women Voters of Missouri, and several individuals.

As of January 2020, over 4,600 individuals, roughly 600 of whom are currently in pretrial detention, were on the waiting list for an attorney in the State of Missouri. These individuals have been charged with crimes and have already qualified for a court-appointed attorney but are being forced to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for one to become available due to an overburdened indigent defense system. As a result, a criminal defendant will likely wait months, or sometimes even years, before they are assigned an attorney.

The ACLU and Advancement Project are suing Missouri over its new voter ID law, charging it fails to provide mandated funding for voter education, free voter IDs and birth certificates, and training of poll workers.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Missouri joined with Planned Parenthood to challenge the latest abortion restriction adopted in Missouri: a mandate that at least 72 hours before an abortion, a woman must receive certain state-scripted information , in person, from the physician who will provide her medical care. This is information already provided to all abortion patients by qualified medical professionals without this duplicative requirement, which is inconsistent with modern medical practice.