The U.S. Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit alleging race and sex discrimination against the Missouri State High School Activities Association (“MSHSAA”), and rightfully so, because if reports are correct, the MSHSAA’s rules are indeed discriminatory.

According to reporting from the Missouri Independent, MSHSAA’s rules require two of its 10 board members to be “candidates representing the underrepresented gender of the current board or an under-represented ethnicity.”

Supporters view the rule as a tool to promote fairness and inclusion.

It isn’t. The problem comes when a position becomes vacant. If eight of the remaining nine board members are all men or all white, for example, the rule would indicate that the candidate must be a woman or an underrepresented minority. This effectively bars candidates based on sex or ethnicity.

The Constitution protects individuals, not categories. However well intended, policies that distribute opportunity based on identity rather than merit raise immediate equal protection concerns. It demeans people to reduce them to nothing more than an identity marker, and it undermines government efficiency to exclude large numbers of candidates for a position because of their race or sex.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out in other contexts. In Arkansas, for example, a prospective member of a state licensing board was effectively barred from consideration because state law required the board to meet racial composition targets. He sued, and the Arkansas Legislature repealed the law. Lawmakers made clear what should have been obvious from the start: public appointments ought to be based on “experience and expertise, not the color of their skin.”

What remains to be determined is whether the MSHSAA is a public institution. It is organized as a private non-profit, but its employees are eligible for the Missouri state employees’ retirement system.

At its core, the matter can be reduced to whether institutions should discriminate based on sex or ethnicity. Given the MSHSAA’s broad mandate, it should not.

The post When Diversity Becomes Discrimination appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

RSVP for This Complimentary Event Here

Thursday, April 10, 2025

12:00 noon

Washington University in St. Louis Law School

Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 305

One Brookings Drive

St. Louis, MO 63130

About the Book – Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites

Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect oppo­nents. Now those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. Rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will soon:

• Be America’s judges, DAs, and prosecutors
• File and fight constitutional lawsuits
• Advise Fortune 500 companies
• Hire other left-wing diversity candidates to staff law firms and government offices
• Run for higher office with an agenda of only enforcing laws that suit left-wing whims

Ilya Shapiro will discuss how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institu­tional weakness.

About the Speaker

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

Read full bio here.

This event is brought to you by: Show-Me Institute, WashULaw Federalist Society, Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, and Show-Me Opportunity.

The post Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites with Ilya Shapiro on April 10 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Last week, I wrote about Missouri’s impending gas tax hike and the multiple questions it raises about the Hancock Amendment. At this point, we know the state’s gas tax will be going up on October 1, but we don’t know when or how the law’s compliance with the Hancock Amendment will be determined.

The bill’s fiscal note made clear that we won’t know whether the bill is constitutional until we know the “fully implemented impacts of all legislation passed during a session.” Such uncertainty raises several concerns. For starters, our state will be raising taxes on Missourians on October 1, but then waiting a number of years before knowing whether the tax hike should have happened in the first place.

Second, we don’t know when every bill from this past legislative session will be “fully implemented.” For example, we do know the gas tax hike will ramp up to 12.5 cents per gallon over the next five years. But will it be considered “fully implemented” in the first full fiscal year for which the tax hike has taken effect—meaning next year—or will we have to wait until 2026 to consider the bill fully implemented? An even more confusing case is SB 153 (Wayfair), which addresses sales taxation for online purchases. My colleagues and I have discussed at length here and here, because it included multiple incremental income tax cuts that won’t occur for an unknown amount of time.

More specifically, what makes the implementation of SB 153 so uncertain is that it included two automatically triggering future income tax cuts. These are in addition to three income tax cuts already on the books from a bill passed in 2014. For these cuts to take effect, state revenue collections must reach certain benchmarks. So, for SB 153 to reach “full implementation,” the revenue targets likely must be met five separate times. This assumes the newly added cuts can only be triggered after the currently remaining three go into effect. It’s important to keep in mind that only one cut can happen each year. So if a final Hancock determination cannot occur until all five cuts take effect, this process will take a minimum of five years, but would likely end up taking much longer.

While it’s hard to predict the future, it’s safe to say these state revenue benchmarks won’t be achieved until after the gas tax bill has fully ratcheted up to 12.5 cents per gallon in 2026. This highlights a potentially devastating Achilles’ heel for the Hancock Amendment. If compliance with the amendment cannot be assessed until every bill passed during a legislative session has gone into full effect, and legislators can pass laws that can take an indefinite number of years to be implemented, there’s no effective constraint on our elected official’s abilities to raise taxes on Missourians without public input as the Hancock Amendment originally intended.

Nevertheless, it still remains true regardless of how Hancock compliance is determined, that if this year’s bills are found to exceed the constitutionally defined revenue limit (which for this year was $111.8 million), the gas tax hike will be sent to voters for approval before collections can continue. And while there are still many questions remaining about how Hancock Amendment compliance will be determined, it’s important to remember that all of this could have been avoided if the legislature had simply asked for voter approval in the first place.

The post Does the Hancock Amendment Have an Achilles Heel? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last month, I wrote about the many complicated questions surrounding the gas tax bill. The primary question is whether the bill runs afoul of the state’s Hancock Amendment, which is a constitutional amendment that requires tax increases above a certain threshold to be subject to a public vote. Several legislators expressed their concerns with the bill and urged the Governor to veto the legislation. In the end, Governor Parson signed the gas tax into law, indicating he’s not too concerned about the potential constitutionality issues.

Perhaps that’s why the bill’s fiscal note was changed before it was signed into law. Originally, the fiscal note stated, “the net increase in state revenues by this proposal exceeds the limit to revenue growth set forth by Article X, Section 18(e)” (meaning the bill’s tax hike is expected to bring in more revenue than the Hancock Amendment allows). But the updated fiscal note added an important caveat:

However, the calculation under Article X, Section 18(e) is based on the fully implemented impacts of all legislation passed during a session. Therefore, it is unknown at this time whether the cumulative impact of all legislation passed during the 2021 session will be greater than the limit allowed.

What this means is that Missouri will be implementing a gas tax hike on October 1 without knowing whether the law violates the state’s constitution. And if it’s later determined the tax hike doesn’t comply with the Hancock Amendment, the issue will be sent to voters for approval before collections can continue.

It’s an unfortunate situation that state taxpayers will soon be facing, and it’s made worse by the fact that it all could have been avoided if the legislature had simply sent the gas tax hike question to voters as it’s done in the past. My colleague Jakob Puckett has written repeatedly about the inadequacy of Missouri’s current gas tax to maintain our state’s deteriorating roads. But is raising taxes on Missourians without their input, and without knowing whether the way it’s being done is constitutional, the right answer? I, for one, don’t think so.

The post Missouri’s Gas Tax Hike is Coming appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In last month’s lower court ruling, Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem found the initiative expanding Medicaid unconstitutional because it failed to include a funding mechanism. As I’ve written before, a constitutional amendment that requires new state expenditures should include measures for funding the expenditures. In my opinion, absent such a requirement, an amendment would infringe on the constitutionally delegated power of Missouri’s legislative branch to appropriate state spending. The state supreme court disagreed, but with one huge caveat.

The court ruled that the amendment doesn’t violate the constitution because it doesn’t specifically appropriate funds. In other words: Missouri’s constitutional amendment can require the state’s Medicaid program to enroll those eligible under expansion, but it can’t compel the legislature to appropriate the funds necessary to cover their costs.

If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. Missouri’s highest court in the land drew a fine line to determine constitutionality but left obvious and important questions unanswered. The legislature thought its refusal to include expansion funding in this year’s budget meant the policy wouldn’t be implemented, but Missouri’s Medicaid budget lines do not include language indicating who the funds cover. As a result, the court concluded the budgeted funds are available to all who are eligible and that would include those covered by the expansion. The decision means that Missouri must start incurring new costs despite not having a plan to pay for them. Until the legislature acts, the cost of covering new enrollees will need to be paid for out of funds specifically set aside for those currently enrolled in Missouri’s program. If this occurs, the Medicaid program will run out of budgeted funds much sooner than anticipated.

So, what should the legislature do? The supreme court’s decision appears to give legislators the authority to continue refusing to provide funding for expansion. Not providing funding for new enrollees would likely require amending the current budget to make clear that the already approved Medicaid budget lines do not apply to expansion enrollees. This action could lead to another court challenge. Lawmakers could also choose to approve expansion funding. But where will the money come from? That’s the multibillion-dollar question. Even though the federal government has currently agreed to pick up 90 percent of the billions in expected expansion costs, all spending needs to be appropriated, and Missouri’s share would still be significant.

It will be interesting to see what our elected officials decide regarding funding the state’s Medicaid program going forward. It seems safe to say there won’t be any easy answers.

The post Missouri Supreme Court Revives Medicaid Expansion appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Recently, I’ve written a lot about the potential for Hancock Amendment issues with the gas tax bill but have yet to outline the more technical questions on the topic. Here is a non-exhaustive list of what I’ll be watching as the situation unfolds:

• How should the revenue impact of SB 262 be calculated for Section 18(e) compliance?
  • The amendment states that the effect shall be measured the first fiscal year the tax increase is “fully effective.” Since the bill would be phased in over five years, should compliance be determined in each of the five years or only once when fully implemented in 2027?
  • At one point Section 18(e) describes compliance as being based on revenue estimates, while elsewhere it refers to the measurement of actual collections. Does this mean the gas tax hike has to go into effect before it can be determined whether the bill should have received a public vote or not?
    • If the calculation is based on estimated revenues, how should the state project the number of Missourians who will take advantage of the refund provisions and how will that impact the ultimate revenue calculations?
    • If using actual collections, how much revenue will the gas tax hike raise and how much will be claimed for a refund? There’s always a real chance that actual collections differ widely from revenue projections, and if that turns out to be the case, what would that mean for the bill’s compliance?
  • How will the other bills signed by Governor Parson this year impact compliance?
    • Based on the answers to the SB 262 questions, similar principles will likely have to be applied to every bill that becomes law this year. What will that mean for Hancock Amendment compliance this year, and for years to come?
      • For example, if the online sales tax bill currently sitting on the governor’s desk becomes law, the fiscal note projects it could potentially increase state revenue collections next year yet reduce total state revenues five years from now. In other words: Could bills passed this year exceed the Hancock Amendment cap next year but be in compliance once they’re fully implemented?
    • What will the courts decide?
      • If the gas tax bill becomes law, there will likely be legal challenges. As I’ve mentioned previously, the approach taken with SB 262 is unprecedented, so the courts could provide some clarity to this complicated topic. What the courts ultimately decide is anyone’s best guess.

Before too long, we’ll know where the governor stands regarding many of these questions, but if he signs the bill his decisions will likely only be the beginning in terms of adjudicating these issues.

The post Does the Gas Tax Bill Violate the Constitution? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Beetem’s decision was in response to a lawsuit from the initiative’s supporters, which was filed after Missouri’s legislature decided against appropriating funding for Medicaid expansion. Governor Parson then halted all state implementation efforts.

As I explained last month, Missouri’s constitution gives the state legislature the responsibility of appropriating all state spending. It also provides that amendments cannot impose new costs without providing a mechanism to pay for them. Yesterday’s ruling holds that the expansion initiative failed to include a funding mechanism, and that growing the state’s Medicaid program by an estimated 275,000 enrollees will cost the state money. (The decision mentions that expansion would cost $1.8 million per year which is almost surely a typo; it should be $1.8 billion, as projections from Missouri’s Medicaid agency show.)

Prior to last August’s election, a different lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the expansion petition on the same legal grounds. As Beetem’s decision explains, the courts at the time decided against removing the initiative from the ballot in part because the fiscal estimates showed a wide range of potential outcomes, from enormous savings to extraordinary costs. If the amendment did end up saving the state money, it wouldn’t need a funding mechanism. As I wrote repeatedly last year, the promise of savings was always illusory Once the true cost of expansion was presented to the legislature, legislators refused to appropriate funding citing their sole constitutional authority on the issue.

The plaintiffs certainly disagree with the circuit court’s ruling and have already filed their appeal. While it may be weeks or months until this issue is ultimately resolved, Judge Beetem’s decision is an important one with implications beyond this particular fight. If a petition to amend our state’s constitution violates the constitutionally defined rules for amending the constitution, it should not stand. It’s really that simple. Time will tell if the Missouri Supreme Court agrees as well.

The post Judge Strikes Down Medicaid Expansion appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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A group of Missouri women who specialize in African-style hair braiding say “no.” On Wednesday their case was heard in federal court.

We’ve discussed the problems with Missouri’s occupational licensing policy before, and there’s no better example of the need for reform than the regulations that require hair braiders to undergo 1,500 hours of expensive training, most of it for services (manicures, facials) that have nothing to do with their work.

We caught up with Institute for Justice attorneys Dan Alban and Paul Avelar, who are representing the hair braiders, for a sit-down discussion on the case and on Wednesday’s hearing:

The post Hair Braiders Challenge Regulatory Requirements appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

You may never have heard of James G. Blaine. He didn’t win. Yet, for more than a century we have been living with one of Blaine’s legacies—Blaine amendments. While he was a senator, Blaine offered an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prevent the federal government from funding sectarian institutions. It was widely known that the amendment stemmed from anti-Catholic sentiment. In 2000, Justices Thomas, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Kennedy stated in Mitchell v. Helms that “it was an open secret that ‘sectarian was code for ‘Catholic.’” The federal amendment failed, but similar versions would be installed later in 37 state constitutions.

Many state officials have cited their Blaine amendments as a reason that private school choice programs would be unconstitutional. These amendments have also prevented religious institutions from receiving funds for non-religious activities. For instance, the amendment was used to bar Trinty Lutheran Church in Columbia, Missouri, from participating in the state’s scrap tire program, which helps nonprofits resurface playground surfaces. Trinity Lutheran appealed this decision all the way to the United States Supreme Court and won.

There is still some debate, as my colleague Mike McShane has noted, as to what impact the Trinity ruling will have on school choice legislation. Our first indication, however, is that the court’s repudiaiton of anti-religious sentiment may bode well for private school choice programs. On June 27, the day after the Trinity Lutheran ruling, the nation’s high court vacated the Supreme Court of Colorodo’s ruling in the Douglas County, Colorado, voucher program, which had been found unconstitutional. The case has been remanded to the state supreme court in light of the Trinity Lutheran ruling.

The Institute for Justice, a group that supports school choice, has long stated that Missouri’s Blaine Amendment was relatively strong and has suggested vouchers may not be feasible in the state. It will be interesting to see if the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Trinity case will further impact Blaine amendments in Missouri and other states. We may never get rid of rancor in politics, but this may be the case that helps us say goodbye to Blaine, Blaine, Amendment Blaine, the school choice barrier from the state of Maine.

The post The School Choice Barrier from the State of Maine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

 A lawsuit before the Florida Supreme Court potentially could oust over 92,000 students from private schools across the state. Despite lower court rulings that the plaintiffs had no legal standing, the Florida Education Association (FEA) continues to challenge Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) program run by Step Up for Students.

 FEA, Florida’s largest teachers union, and other groups filed the lawsuit claiming the program takes funding away from public schools and violates the state constitution by giving taxpayer money to religious schools. The district court ruled that the plaintiffs could not prove they had been harmed by the program because the FTC program concerns the state’s taxing power and not its appropriations.

 Step Up for Students, a state-approved non-profit organization, handed out nearly 100,000 scholarships for the 2016–2017 schoolyear. Along with administering the Gardiner Scholarship, which helped Malachi Kuhn and 5,843 other special needs students, Step Up for Students provided scholarships for a record 92,011 low-income students this year to attend private schools.  

 While the Gardiner Scholarship is funded from Florida’s state appropriations, the FTC program is completely funded by private donations. This tax credit, established in 2002, allows corporations to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for their donations to Step Up for Students. 

 The result? $2.2 billion donated and 572,237 scholarships funded in the past 14 years.

 While remaining optimistic, parents are getting ready to defend the program and the educational opportunity it creates for their children. For low-income families, the FTC program provides an alternative to the public schools that are in many cases failing to offer quality education.

 How does Florida’s FTC program relate to school choice in Missouri? If the Florida Supreme Court upholds the FTC program as constitutional, that ruling could bolster the case for any similar program in Missouri against possible constitutional challenges, opening the door of opportunity for tens of thousands of Missouri students. This summer, Marty Lueken and Mike McShane released an essay estimating that a tax credit-funded scholarship program in Missouri could provide over 12,000 scholarships and, contrary to the claims of groups like FEA, save the state and local districts around $8.3 million per year.

 The FTC program has made a tremendous impact on low-income and minority communities in Florida. Hopefully the program will be upheld in court and school choice programs will continue to spread throughout the nation. 

The post Another Misguided Legal Attack on School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas is not alone. At the end of its session this year, the Texas Supreme Court came down with a decision on the constitutionality of its school finance system. Not long ago, the Missouri Supreme Court was asked the same question, and given the changes to the school funding formula this legislative session, it is entirely possible that the state might be taken to court again.

Years of lawsuits and millions of dollars in legal fees have been devoted to 15 words in Article Six of the Kansas constitution “The legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state.” In Texas, it’s a few more, but conveys the same message. In Missouri, our Constitution at least gives some benchmark, saying that we can spend no less than 25% of state revenue on our public schools, but even that has been challenged over the years.

These cases have well-compensated lawyers, expert witnesses, and consultants trying to force courts to read minute detail into constitutional language. Complicated studies are conducted to place an exact dollar amount on what constitutes “suitable provision,” so that a penny less is seen as violating the constitution.

This is not how we should determine what to spend on our schools, for two reasons.

First, no one really knows exactly how much we should be spending on education. Costing out the precise dollar value of a quality education is beyond the knowledge base of social science today. We simply do not know that spending X amount of money will yield Y level of achievement. What’s more, we have a belief that low-income students, students with special needs, and students who have to learn the English language cost more to educate—but how much more? We simply don’t know.

Second, for all of its faults, the legislature is better qualified to make funding decisions than the courts are. Courts are not in a good position to weigh the complicated tradeoffs that legislatures must make when they appropriate state tax dollars. We don’t live in a world of unlimited resources. As a result, legislators have to weigh the needs of schools against other needs, like roads, healthcare, and everything else that the state supports. Courts are rarely, if ever, asked to determine how their decisions might affect these other priorities. And depending on whether judges are appointed or elected, they may be harder to hold accountable than legislators, who must run for re-election.

Not everyone is going to agree with the decisions that the legislature makes, and their complaints will be justified in some cases. But that is why we have elections. Calling on the courts should be an absolute last resort, reserved for the most egregious cases. In most instances, the only thing that will be accomplished by including the courts will be to make lawyers and consultants richer, not improve educational outcomes for children.

The post The Never-Ending School Finance Wars appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With respect to a uniform system of public education, Judge Eric Johnson argued “The Legislature can provide for a uniform system of common schools, free from religious instruction and open to general attendance by all Nevada children, and still adopt other suitable means of encouraging education.” Pretty airtight logic there.

With respect to the state’s Blaine Amendment, as my friend Jason Bedrick points out over at the Cato Institute’s blog, the court argued that the state’s Blaine Amendment “was not intended to preclude any expenditure that has an incidental benefit to religion, where such is made for a primary secular purpose.” It built upon this reasoning by arguing that the ESA “was enacted for the valid secular purpose of providing financial assistance to parents to take advantage of educational options available to Nevada children.” The fact that some religious organizations might benefit is “ancillary and indirect.” Game. Set. Match.

This ruling matters for those of us hoping to see an ESA program created in Missouri. Missouri has an extremely restrictive Blaine Amendment that libertarian legal scholars have feared would preclude any kind of private school choice program that is not funded through tax credited donations.  If the standard jurisprudence on these programs concludes (correctly, I’d argue, for what its worth) that ESAs are created primarily for the secular purpose of educating children and that religious organizations only benefit second-hand, it might change the state of play here.

All told, last week was a great one for school choice, and I hope that the Judge’s decision will be supported if and when his ruling is appealed.

The post Education Savings Accounts Found Constitutional in Nevada appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a quest to build a new riverfront stadium to keep the Rams in Saint Louis, some state and local leaders are trying their very hardest to make sure that virtually no one has a vote on the matter. At the state level, the governor plans to issue new debt without any legislative approval. At the local level, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority (RSA), which owns the dome, wants to extend city bonds without a public vote. They have sued to overturn an ordinance requiring such a vote.

We’ve already discussed the RSA’s unconvincing arguments against the ordinance requiring a public vote in the city. Summing up the matter:

The lawsuit’s proponents argue that the city’s ordinance is broad and vague, prevents the city from participating in planning and site preparation, and contradicts state statutes. In fact, the ordinance is doing precisely what it is designed to do: prevent the city from using every trick in the book to fund a new stadium without a vote.

At the state level, a group of legislators have sued to prevent the governor from unilaterally extending bonds. They essentially argue that the bonds in question were passed with the express purpose of funding the Edward Jones Dome, not a riverfront stadium. Whatever the courts decide on the issue, a reading of the original statutes certainly makes it seem like they have a case.

Stadium proponents argue that the failure of the state legislature to pass a clarifying law in the last session means this suit is without merit. That argument makes little sense; existing laws do not lose effect when more specific guidelines fail to pass. But stadium proponents go further, impugning the motives of the legislators who filed the suit, essentially claiming they did not care about Saint Louis. Gov. Nixon publicly joked that they hatched the plan at a Chiefs game. And of course, the stadium backers continue to argue what a boon a new stadium will be to Saint Louis. In doing so, they contradict nearly every economist who has ever studied stadium subsidies.

Whatever position one takes on the plan, spending $400 million of public money on an NFL stadium is certainly controversial. It seems only right that Saint Louisans should get to vote on the spending of  the money, as they were promised. It seems only right that the legislature should have to approve more state spending. As to those who are willing to circumvent any democratic roadblock to keep the Rams, perhaps one senator put it best when he said:

What I’m amazed at is that people’s passion for football exceeds their passion for our constitutional form of government and the rule of law. And how they would place their desire to root for their football team above their desire to have government function properly.

The post Missouri Stadium Funding Plan Is Bad Policy, Possibly Illegal appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If you’re short on time, however, the case deals with what happens when a state declines to set up an insurance exchange under Obamacare, forcing the federal government to do so instead. Here’s the big question in King: Does the Affordable Care Act (ACA) block federal subsidies from going to insurance plans purchased in government exchanges that were not, as the law says, “established by the State”? If the answer is yes, it could simultaneously take subsidies away from millions of insurance plans and protect millions of taxpayers from the law’s mandates. It’d be a body blow to the law.

Why would Congress condition subsidies on states building their own exchanges? The answer is reasonably straightforward: Congress didn’t want the burden of creating exchanges to be on the federal government—that is, Healthcare.gov—and thought offering the subsidy as a carrot would get states to do the heavy lifting. Congress never thought the federal government would be running the exchanges for basically two-thirds of the country, as it’s doing today. Healthcare.gov’s rollout disaster was part and parcel of this miscalculation by Congress.

Supporters of Obamacare now contend the “established by the State” language was a drafting error, but there is lots of evidence that runs against that claim. The state exchange “carrot” strategy had appeared in prior, contemporaneous bills that were combined to form the ACA—suggesting that at least some legislators were well aware of the system they were creating. In fact, in the years that followed, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber famously repeated what the consequences of states not building their own exchanges would be:

With most states declining to create their own exchanges, the Internal Revenue Service then wrote rules that would extend the federal subsidies not only to exchanges “established by the State,” but also to federal exchanges. The problem is that since the federal subsidies are the basis for penalties that, thanks to the IRS, would suddenly apply to tens of millions of Americans in states that didn’t create exchanges, those subsidies could be an illegal tax. Thus, we have the King litigation.

After Wednesday’s oral arguments, we’ll likely see a decision handed down on the case sometime this summer. How will it turn out? We’ll keep you posted.

The post King v. Burwell: A Quick Preview appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Much could be said about Hawley. A graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law, Hawley went on to clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts. He was one of the attorneys for Hobby Lobby in last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, and he has been a highly sought-after speaker on a wide variety of legal and historical matters for a number of years. His book, Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness (2008), is available on Amazon. Hawley also happens to be a graduate of my alma mater, Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City.

His talk is definitely worth your time. A short version is embedded below, and the complete talk can be found here.

The post Constitutional Law Expert Joshua Hawley Weighs in on Obamacare at Policy Forum appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In February, the Show-Me Institute released “Live Free and Learn: A Case Study of New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program,” written by Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute. Bedrick also discussed this school choice program at an event we hosted at Lindenwood University (see video above [starts at 4:00]). At the time, he noted that the scholarship program was being challenged in the New Hampshire courts. Yesterday, the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a big win for the families benefiting from the program.

Blogging about the ruling, Bedrick writes:

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s flawed and unprecedented decision, which had forbidden scholarship recipients from using the funds at religiously affiliated private schools. The lower court held that the scholarship funds constituted ‘money raised by taxation’ and therefore violated the state’s historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, which states:

“[No] money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination. (New Hampshire Constitution, Part II, Article 83)

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court did not address the merits of the lower court’s decision because it held the petitioners were unable to demonstrate that ‘their personal rights have been impaired or prejudiced.’ Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the petitioners’ standing in ACSTO v. Winn, held that the tax-credit funds did not constitute public money because they had not ‘come into the tax collector’s hands.'”

Like New Hampshire, Missouri has a Blaine Amendment that prohibits public dollars going to religious institutions. That is why this ruling is important for private school choice supporters in Missouri to take note of this case. Because the funding in a tax credit scholarship program does not enter into the public treasury, the funds should not be considered public dollars. For this reason, a tax credit scholarship program may have the best chance of passing constitutional muster in the Show-Me State.

The post Vindication for New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

MOSIRA had strong support of St. Louis-area biotech groups, and it was the lone accomplishment of the fall 2011 legislative session that was devoted to economic development. But lawmakers voted to approve MOSIRA that fall contingent on passage of a broader tax credit reform measure, which never happened. That led to a lawsuit by Missouri Roundtable for Life – which is concerned that MOSIRA could lead state funds to be used for stem cell or cloning research – and the program’s being overturned before ever launching.

In their opinion Tuesday, the justices wrote that the 2011 bill’s contingency clause violated the “single subject provision” of state law, and that the contingency clause could not be severed from the larger legislation, as it likely would not have passed without that clause in place.

Trivia: Do you know the bill upon which MOSIRA’s implementation was contingent? The answer: A package of tax credit legislation that included . . . the highly controversial Aerotropolis project. As went Aerotropolis, so went the 2011 session . . . and now, MOSIRA. Which is to say, nowhere.

Of course, there is an easy solution to avoid court fights such as this. Why not eliminate business taxation for all of Missouri’s companies? Stop picking winners and losers and set up a system of tax collection that incentivizes all businesses to stay in or come to Missouri. If the state wants to diversify its “investments” and support existing and emerging industries, why not tell all businesses, here and elsewhere, “We want you to invest in Missouri”? If the state did that, Missouri would, for once, force other states to respond to our pro-growth taxing proposals, rather than the other way around.

The post Want to Help Science Start-ups? Cut Their Taxes. While We’re At It, Cut Everyone’s. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Saint Louis City’s system violates due process because  tickets sent to alleged violators do not contain information about a court hearing date or the right to contest. That means, attorney Bevis Schock (a Show-Me Institute board member) told KMOX, that “. . . there’s no way the defendant, the person receiving the notice, understands that there’s a right to a hearing.”

Hopefully this ruling will help bring about the elimination of red light cameras in Missouri. In our state, red light cameras have not been shown to increase safety. But they are popular, perhaps because they can help a city raise a great deal of revenue from traffic tickets.

This latest ruling throws the continued operation of red light cameras in Saint Louis City into question. One Saint Louis attorney has said that he would advise family members to not pay red light camera tickets because the penalty for the ticket appears to be just threatening letters from a company in Texas.

In related news, at the most recent Columbia City Council meeting, city officials reported that the installation of red light cameras had resulted in more than a four-fold increase in tickets. The city has issued more than 3,500 tickets since the cameras were installed in September 2009, compared to an average of about 330 tickets before the cameras were installed.

And earlier this year, Kansas City found that red light cameras in its city had not increased safety, as promised. In fact, the study found that both accidents and fatal accidents had increased at a majority of intersections where red light cameras are installed.

For more information about the policy questions regarding red light cameras, watch Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst David Stokes’ recent vlog on the Saint Louis red light camera issue, or check out our “Policing By Camera” panel discussion with Lembke, Saint Louis Alderman Antonio French, and Redditt Hudson of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

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