On or around Tuesday, February 27, your television station began airing a 30-second ad for The Committee to Keep The Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County. As you know, the Federal Communications Commission “expects broadcasters to be responsible to the community they serve and act with reasonable care to ensure that advertisements aired on their stations are not false or misleading.” Since the referenced ad contains statements that are misleading and in a substantial way misinform your viewers about what is at stake in the April 2 election, I am writing to ask that you pull the ad from the air.

• • At around the 11 second mark, the narrator urges viewers to, “Vote yes on question 1 that keeps the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County.” As you know, the ordinance on which Jackson County voters are being asked to vote does not compel either team to remain in the county.  The language of the ordinance, available online here, merely states that a new sales tax is contingent upon several factors, a new lease being among them.  As you also know, there is no new lease agreement as of this writing.
  • At about the 22 second mark, the ad states that the measure includes, “no new taxes.” This is also demonstrably untrue. The voters of Jackson County are being asked to vote on the measure exactly because it is a new tax. The 2006 measure approved by voters, available online here, contains no language regarding an extension. The measure voters are being asked to approve in this election, available online here, clearly distinguishes in section 2 the difference between the current levy and “the new levy.”

I appreciate that a 30-second spot cannot be an exhaustive discussion of the matter at hand. But the claim that the vote imposes no new taxes is incorrect. Were there no such vote, the current tax would expire on September 30, 2031. Also, the current tax was for different things than the new, longer time-frame tax. The Committee to Keep The Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County could state that the new tax is the same amount as the current tax, but the claim that there is no new taxes intentionally leaves the impression that nothing will change. In fact, voters are agreeing to a new and different tax, and for a much longer period of time.

The Committee is perfectly able, given their resources, to make any number of arguments in the few weeks of the campaign. I do not doubt that they will. But your station should insist that their paid media be clear and honest with your viewers. This ad is substantially misleading and should be pulled off the air.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to your decision.

I received a reply from only one of them, who wrote on March 2:

Thank you for your email.

 I appreciate you reaching out with your concern.

We have reviewed the ad and the advertiser’s substantiation for the factual statements.  Based on this information we will continue to run the ad.

The ad – and any contrary speech — is part of the open and robust political discourse upon which the First Amendment is based.

I asked to be provided with the advertiser’s substantiation of its statements, but have not yet received it. We will share that with you if and when we receive it.

The post The Ads in Favor of the New Royals/Chiefs Sales Tax Are Misleading appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That said, there is a great deal of balancing that has to take place when considering legislation like this. After all, employers and landlords both have their own interests in having a full picture of who they’re hiring or housing. Does a bank want to hire someone convicted of fraud? Probably not. Good faith arguments about the manner and extent of expungement laws are an important part of the process, and those debates are happening in Missouri over Clean Slate. For me, a Missouri version of Clean Slate needs to ensure two things happen.

First, in contrast to Clean Slate’s “automatic expungement” proposal, why not have former offenders initiate the expungement process, after which expungement is automatic?

It’s a nuanced but important point. Supporters of model Clean Slate legislative language generally prefer the idea of “automatic expungement”—that after a certain period of time, an offense drops off criminal records without any action taken by the ex-offender. In Missouri, the existing expungement process is a petition-based system, which can be fraught, winding, and ultimately unwieldy for many former offenders to navigate. Many don’t bother, leaving expungeable offenses on their records.

But combining the offender-initiated expungement process with automated expungement offers the best of both worlds. It puts the responsibility on an offender to start the process of beginning a new chapter in their lives and strikes out the judicial bureaucracy that stops many ex-offenders from initiating expungement to begin with.

Second, the state should not impose a sort of prior restraint on background check companies.

The standard Clean Slate proposal contemplates restrictions on what background check companies can tell employers and landlords, even if what they tell them is true. There’s no denying the truth that ex-offenders broke the law, and background check companies have the right to share truthful information about an individual’s criminal record. The question is, how do you best balance the First Amendment rights of companies and the policy objectives of Clean Slate?

Well, a better way forward is to set out legal incentives for background check companies in the way they characterize past expunged offenses. The state should allow background check companies (1) to omit expunged offenses and protect them from liability for that omission, and (2) to report the expunged offense but only if its expungement is clearly included. Such an approach would not only allow background check companies a path to omit offenses without running afoul of the First Amendment, but it would also give ex-offenders a right to sue for defamation if their criminal history is mischaracterized by these companies.

Central to the issue of background checks is how those performing background checks even gain access to this criminal justice information, which at its core is a kind of transparency issue. Missouri has a robust court activity database where reams of case information are readily available to the public, and overall, that’s a good thing.

But while transparency of government is extraordinarily important, transparency of the records of individuals is a thornier policy subject. Individual income tax filings are highly protected documents not subject to public perusal; should non-violent and comparatively low-level criminal offenses be treated similarly? Perhaps. In any case, if the expungement of criminal records is ever to be properly effectuated, legislators must also assess how available these records should be in general.

As with all policy proposals, legislators should weigh out all the costs and benefits of Clean Slate, both as originally proposed and as it might be modified for Missouri. For a complex issue like criminal justice reform, the details matter, and getting those details right can take time. Clean Slate may or may not get done this year, but with a few tweaks, I think it can get done here in Missouri sooner, not later.

The post A (Tweaked) Clean Slate Bill Offers an Important Opportunity for Criminal Justice Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Similarly to the Trinity Lutheran Church case in Missouri and the Espinoza case in Montana, the court held that allowing students to take their public dollars to a religious school of their choice does not establish an official state religion any more than using a Pell grant at a religious university does. The ruling does not require states to fund school choice. But, if they have a school choice program, they may not exclude religious schools from participating.

Beginning this fall, qualified Missouri families can apply for an Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) to be used to pay for, among other things, tuition at a private school. Five of the six approved Education Assistance Organizations (EAOs) that will be disbursing the scholarships are religious. The latest Supreme Court ruling should put to bed any questions as to whether anyone should take issue with that.

The post A SCOTUS Victory for Private School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The ruling finally puts to rest whether states can discriminate against religious schools in state-funded scholarship programs. Until now, states have relied upon constitutional amendments—born from an idea conceived by Congressman James Blaine nearly 150 years ago—to prevent any public money from going to religious schools. These so-called “Blaine Amendments” were primarily about discriminating against Catholic schools at a time when the Protestant majority was concerned about Catholic immigration. But no more.

And if you don’t think parents want to be able to find the school that’s best for their children, then you haven’t met Kathy Espinoza. Her years-long fight for her children went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Now it’s settled. But just because the legal question is settled doesn’t mean there isn’t still much work to be done. States still need to act, and lawmakers should recognize that parents want and deserve school choice, regardless of school type.

It’s likely that there will be a lot of unhappy parents this fall as districts begin to release their reopening plans. Missouri has over 25,000 available private school seats; some are in religious schools, and some are in secular schools. This ruling means the Missouri Legislature could let parents access these seats by creating scholarship programs that would allow families to choose the best education for them. As of today, lawmakers are out of excuses.

The post SCOTUS Delivers Key School Choice Victory appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s an issue we don’t talk a great deal about, but it’s one that we’ve had a clear and long-standing stance on. Back in 2012, my colleague Michael Rathbone wrote about the problems with a proposal that would have further limited vertical integration of alcohol distribution in the state, and in 2013, my colleague David Stokes testified on the matter before the Missouri Legislature. It was logical, then, that we would have a stance on litigation that the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on yesterday, and for which we submitted an amicus brief in collaboration with the Washington Legal Foundation in 2018.

The case, Missouri Broadcasters Association v. Dorothy Taylor, centered on a very specific aspect of Missouri’s three-tier law that prevents producers and distributors from providing certain advertising materials to retailers. Although there are many policy problems with the three-tier law, the First Amendment issue here is particularly egregious. Even though commercial speech has historically been subject to greater regulation, courts are generally reticent to impose or enforce content restrictions and burdens on commercial speakers. And as our amicus brief notes, these content impositions are substantial:

In § 311.070.1, Missouri prohibits alcohol manufacturers and distributors from “directly or indirectly, loan[ing], giv[ing] away or furnish[ing] equipment, money, credit or property of any kind” to “retail dealers.” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 311.070.1. This blanket ban prohibits manufacturers and distributors from giving any advertising-related support to retailers. In § 311.070.4(10), however, Missouri allows manufacturers and distributors to advertise on behalf of retailers, so long as the advertisement (1) excludes any mention of retail price, (2) lists “two or more unaffiliated retailers,” (3) does so only once, and (4) displays the retailers’ names inconspicuously. Mo. Rev. Stat. 4 § 311.070.4(10). But this “exception” is just an unconstitutional condition on exercising First Amendment rights.

And yesterday, the court of appeals agreed. Readers can find the ruling and our full amicus brief attached at the bottom of this page. We may have more to say on this matter in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that we are pleased with this outcome and hope that policymakers will, separately, consider doing more to dismantle Missouri’s antiquated alcohol regulatory regime in the future.

The post Raise a Toast: Missouri Three-Tier Speech Prohibition Struck Down appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the aftermath of the decision, government unions were unable to convince many non-members to become full-fledged members and pay dues. As I discussed in a previous post, union financial reports submitted to the Department of Labor show the National Education Association lost the 88,000 non-member agency fee payers it had in 2017. And the Americans Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union lost 110,000 agency fee payers. The financial reporting of another large public-sector union, the American Federation of Teachers, does not reflect the impact of Janus because its reporting period ended in the same month as the decision. However, a new report from the Freedom Foundation states that “union spokespeople indicate the union lost nearly all 85,000 agency fee-payers it had at the time of the decision.”

As Kovacs notes later in the piece, the Janus decision doesn’t only affect non-member fee payers, who in many states were the primary beneficiaries of the case, but also union members themselves. As the ruling notes, “Unless employees clearly and affirmatively consent before any money is taken from them, this standard [for waiving one’s First Amendment rights] cannot be met.”

But are union members aware of these rights? Kovacs persuasively suggest that the answer is no, and that state law can still act as a barrier to securing these rights.

Prior to the Janus decision, workers who wished to opt-out of union membership were restricted by what are known as window periods. For example, in Michigan, many public employees could only leave their union once a year during a short period of time in August. Other window periods only permitted members to leave the union for a brief time period around the anniversary of their hiring.

Despite the text of the decision that allows workers to resign union membership nearly at any time, labor unions are still blocking workers who want to leave by enforcing these invalid window periods. In a recent case, Hendrickson v. AFSCME, New Mexico public employee Brett Hendrickson, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, was prohibited from exercising his Janus rights to resign from union membership. Hendrickson, a quality control specialist for the New Mexico Human Services Department, attempted to leave AFSCME Council 18 and stop dues from being deducted from his paycheck, but was told he could only opt-out during a narrow window period. This is just one of many examples of unions coercing worker to continue paying dues and undermining their First amendment rights.

To what extent Missouri government workers are having their rights curtailed is the subject of rigorous debate. For instance, a court injunction against House Bill (HB) 1413, which reformed much of Missouri’s labor law framework, has created uncertainty as to what the law is on basic issues like union membership and representation. Also, collective bargaining agreements in the state were (to be generous) lightly overseen by the state even before HB 1413 became law, meaning that violations of workers’ rights could be ongoing—and hardly anyone would know about it. Fortunately, Missouri did not technically allow for “fair share fees” of the sort that Janus put an end to nationwide, so many Missouri workers had at least incidental knowledge of their labor rights in the Show-Me State. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

The better educated workers are about their rights, the better off they will be. Especially in this post-Janus legal environment, that educational process is more important than ever.

The post Are Government Unions Adequately Informing Workers of Their Rights? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I and others will have more analysis of this over the next few hours and days, but suffice it to say that this is a win for supporters of the First Amendement, for government employees, and for taxpayers.

2. The State’s extraction of agency fees from nonconsenting publicsector employees violates the First Amendment. Abood erred in concluding otherwise, and stare decisis cannot support it. Abood is therefore overruled. Pp. 7–47.

(a) Abood’s holding is inconsistent with standard First Amendment principles. Pp. 7–18.

(1) Forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable raises serious First Amendment concerns. E.g., West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 633. That includes compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers. E.g., Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. 298, 309. In Knox and Harris v. Quinn, 573 U. S. ___, the Court applied an “exacting” scrutiny standard in judging the constitutionality of agency fees rather than the more traditional strict scrutiny. Even under the more permissive standard, Illinois’ scheme cannot survive. Pp. 7–11.

The post Supreme Court Rules Against Agency Fees in Janus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post David French on Free Speech appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Will the Supreme Court Strike Down the Blaine Amendment? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post U.S. Supreme Court to Weigh In on Playground Dispute appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

James G. Blaine was the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a Senator from Maine, and the Republican party’s nominee for president in 1884. While historical accounts differ about his personal attitudes toward Catholics, there is no question that he tried to leverage anti-Catholic sentiment to make his way into the White House. He attempted to amend the U.S. Constitution to bar aid to the burgeoning Catholic school system that was cropping up around the country in response to the public schools’ emphasis on teaching Protestantism. (Many might be unaware that for a long time, students in public schools would read from the King James Bible and sing Christian hymns). 

While Blaine was unsuccessful in amending the U.S. Constitution, 38 states have so called “anti-aid” provisions in their Constitutions, including Missouri.

Lawyers for Trinity, and for numerous faith groups filing amicus briefs, argue that the application of such provisions violates the First and Fourteenth amendment rights of individuals and organizations. As lawyers for the Institute for Justice put it, “the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, demand neutrality—not hostility—toward religion.” The State of Missouri singled out Trinity, whose application otherwise would have been approved, solely because it is a religious organization even though the “aid” does not advance its religion.

Understandably, many folks reading this might not care about a school resurfacing its playground. But it is important to note that religious organizations provide important social services to members of our community—and to poor and marginalized communities around the nation—with government support. Soldiers use the GI Bill to attend Saint Louis University, and low-income families use Medicaid dollars at Cardinal Glennon hospital. If providing used tires to Trinity Lutheran is unlawfully providing aid to a religion, wouldn’t these other examples of cooperation between government and religious organizations amount to the same thing? 

A decision in favor of Trinity would reinforce a commitment to treat religious organizations neutrally (neither privileging them nor discriminating against them) and would help close the door on a sad time in American history.

The post The Supreme Court Can Put a Nail in the Anti-Catholic Coffin appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But that could change if a lawsuit challenging the North Dakota mandatory bar and filed in the Eighth Circuit — of which Missouri is a part — is successful.

A lawsuit filed by a Bismarck attorney will appear before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Tuesday, April 4, claiming the North Dakota State Bar Association spent his dues to oppose a ballot measure he supported.

Arnold Fleck, 59, a self-employed attorney and member of the association, is being represented by the Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based public policy think tank, in his lawsuit that argues the association contributed nearly $50,000 to a PAC opposing a shared parenting time and responsibility bill in 2014. An amended version of that bill — though shot down by voters twice in the past decade — just passed the Senate last week and before the state bar opposed the legislation, it took a neutral stance on the measure….

The case is addressing two additional issues: requiring the bar to adopt an “opt-in” for political spending, rather than an opt-out, and challenging mandatory bar membership as a violation of the First Amendment.

We have long talked about the Constitutional attractiveness of opt-in arrangements especially when political speech is involved, but the ability of mandatory bars to command dues payments creates substantive fungibility problems if only an “opt-in” reform is adopted. If the Show-Me Institute could force every educator in the state to pay us for the right to educate, that would be an enormous benefit to our day-to-day operations that would help make fundraising for other Show-Me projects much easier. In reality, SMI has no such power, and the supporters we have are supporters of their own accord rather than through compulsion. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

But that freedom to associate and support an organization, or not, should apply as much to Bar membership as it does to other policy spaces. I don’t have a problem with the idea of a Bar exam to ensure prospective lawyers are versed in local law and jurisprudence, but once that hurdle’s been cleared, further interaction with a state Bar should be optional. In states where the statewide bar isn’t mandatory, the state still polices the legal profession effectively; there’s no reason to believe North Dakota, Missouri and other mandatory bar states wouldn’t be able to, as well.

Plenty of local bars continue to exist not because lawyers have to be members, but because they want to be members. The state Bar should adopt the same model.

The post The Mandatory Bar Goes to Court appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This case is part of a broader effort around the country to eliminate Blaine Amendments, provisions placed into state constitutions (including Missouri’s) barring public aid to religious schools. Blaine Amendments are named after James G. Blaine, a U.S. Senator from Maine who in 1875 tried to amend the U.S. Constitution to stamp out public dollars flowing to “sectarian” schools.  At the time, there was a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism in America, and because “public” schools were actually nominally Protestant (they required students to read the King James Bible and sing Christian hymns) “sectarian” meant Catholic, and many wanted them stamped out.

Efforts by Catholics to make public schools more inclusive were met with resistance, most notably in events like the Philadelphia Bible Riots, which were sparked over allegations that schools in the City of Brotherly Love would allow Catholics students to read their own version of the Bible. In response, Catholics began to create their own schools, where they could impart their values on their children.  This, not surprisingly, angered the anti-Catholic bigots who did everything they could to shut these schools down.

Blaine was unsuccessful in his attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution, but was successful in getting states all around the country to put language in theirs. We live with the legacy of this bigotry today, as students look to states for support to attend private schools, many of which are religious.

Interestingly, a case out of Missouri has wound its way to the Supreme Court challenging these provisions (I wrote about it here a couple of months ago), but it is not clear how broad or narrow a decision in that case might be. It could strike down (or uphold) Blaine Amendments in total, or it could rule simply on certain practical applications that might not apply to private schools. It is possible that this Douglas County case could similarly make its way to the Supreme Court, so school choice advocates may have more than one bite at the Blaine Amendment apple.

The post A Setback in the Fight against Blaine Amendments appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Courage does not tremble in the face of coercion. It does not beg for forgiveness for non-existent crimes.  It stands tall in the defense of freedom . . . and in opposition to the dangers of mob rule or jackbooted tyranny.

All of which brings us to the wave of student protests that hit colleges and universities across the country in the fall of 2015. In one college after another, college presidents and administrators capitulated to unreasonable demands and went out of their way to curry favor with unruly protestors. In doing so, the titular leaders of these citadels of higher education acted both unwisely and with a shameful lack of courage.

The wave of protests began at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and it was here that assault on free speech became crystallized in the now-infamous picture of an MU communications professor calling for “some muscle” to bar campus journalists from a public area occupied by protestors.

Showing real courage in the face of taunts and physical intimidation, Tim Tai, a student photographer on assignment from ESPN, refused to leave the scene and asserted his First Amendment right to videotape in a public place—telling the protestors that his desire was to protect free speech for them no less than for himself.

In a quick succession of events in early November, protesters toppled University of Missouri system President Tim Wolfe, who was unpopular for reasons that had little or nothing to do with race. It began when a black graduate student (the son of a wealthy business executive) went on a hunger strike demanding Wolfe’s resignation. A few days later, black football players (coming to the end of a losing season) joined in a sympathy strike—refusing to play and  exposing the university to a $1 million fine if it were forced to forfeit an upcoming game against Brigham Young University. Then head football coach Gary Pinkel (only days before announcing his retirement for health reasons) chose to play Fletcher Christian to Wolfe’s Captain Bligh – supporting his players in the mutiny against a sitting university president. On the very next day, Wolfe resigned—and black football players agreed to end their strike.

Lessons learned?

We are all limited to our own experience, so no one can tell how prevalent bias and racism may be at an institution the size of the University of Missouri (with 35,000 students).  However, putting aside undocumented claims of deep and widespread bias by a few protestors (including a much-trumpeted but spurious report of a large Ku Klux Klan presence on the MU campus), we will cite three lessons.

First, there is a clear free-speech problem at the University of Missouri and other campuses. People are not allowed to express certain opinions, and even media coverage of protesting students is prohibited by those whose self-righteousness is overwhelming.

Second, you can tell that the values of the university have been misplaced—and indeed corrupted—when the football team and its coach play a decisive role in the resolution of a major conflict. 

Third, it seems to us that the obsessive insistence by protest leaders (not just at MU but within the larger Black Lives Matter movement) that almost everything that is wrong in our society reduces to a single problem—white racism and supremacy in an ongoing saga that casts blacks in the role of victims—is not only unfair but truly unhelpful. More than anything else, it is a major distraction in the way of any serious attempt to come to grips with problems that disproportionately affect black people living in poorer neighborhoods—everything from low rates of K-12 educational achievement to high rates of unemployment and crime among black youth, and from government programs that discourage work to the sharp decline in recent decades of intact two-parent families.

At the end of the day, it may be that what happened at Mizzou last November will serve a useful purpose—alerting many people to the danger of falling into an intellectual trap: supporting calls for greater “diversity” that are more realistically described as an attempt to enforce an unquestioning and frightened conformity.

We hope that the new leaders of the university will have the wisdom and courage to reject an anti-free speech conformity that masquerades as a paradigm-busting “diversity.”

The post Free Speech Under Fire at Colleges and Universities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas is taking a step in the right direction. The Kansas Senate just passed a bill that would give teachers the right to vote for their union on a regular basis. In most states, including Kansas and Missouri, once a union takes control of a group of public employees, such as teachers or firefighters, that union remains in power indefinitely. There is no election every two or four years whereby workers can hold their union accountable. If workers want to remove a union from power, they need to organize again and go through a difficult “decertification” process.

Some Missouri lawmakers have also explored the possibility of regular union elections for government workers. So far, these bills haven’t had a floor vote.

If individual employees of our public institutions are going to be forced to subsidize a union, we need to protect them from unaccountable union executives. Unions can force people to pay for their services on the theory that an individual’s rights can be curtailed for “workplace democracy.” So let’s ensure there’s democracy. Require unions to run for re-election every couple of years. This is how democracy works.

The post Supreme Court Decision Deals a Blow to Union Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Paycheck Protection: This First Amendment-supporting reform passed the Missouri legislature by veto-proof majorities earlier this year. Unionized government employees should not have to underwrite political speech that they don't support. Paycheck Protection flips the equation around, allowing employees to instead opt-in to a union's politics, or keep their hard-earned money. Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed the bill last week; fortunately, we can expect the House and Senate to return to the legislation in the next few weeks to try to override that veto. The reform is one of a raft of government union accountability measures that are long overdue in Missouri.
• Ethics reform: Ethics legislation has already cleared both chambers that would limit elected officials' ability to act as paid political consultants, but a number of other good bills remain on the table that have a solid shot of passage. Among the most important bills that I hope will build some momentum as the session continues is a bill that would enforce a "cooling off period" between the time a legislator leaves office and the time he or she becomes a lobbyist. Effectively a non-compete agreement, this cooling off period would help to ensure that taxpayers have the undivided loyalties of their elected officials while those officials are in office. 
• Tax reform: While Kansas City and St. Louis decide whether to end their earnings taxes themselves in a few weeks, the legislature has continued to debate whether to cut taxes statewide, as well. One proposal would extend the income tax cut passed in 2014, reducing the top rate to 5% over a period of years. That would be a modest cut, but it would be an important one that would signal the state was open for business. The legislative chambers may also debate whether to phase out the state's earnings taxes directly, but it is unclear whether the House and Senate will make those reforms a priority this year.
• Tax incentive reform: We've talked for years about the problems that are created when governments cut special tax breaks for cronies, and a number of bills in the legislature would make progress on the tax incentive fronts at both the state and local levels. One bill in particular would reform tax increment financing decisions in the St. Louis area by, among other things, changing what development projects can receive if a county TIF commission rejects a TIF proposal.
• Obamacare's Medicaid expansion: While it was a live issue as late as last year, it appears Obamacare's Medicaid expansion is going nowhere in Missouri in 2016. That's appropriate; Medicaid is a broken program, and rather than double-down on this broken status quo, state and national leaders should focus instead on reforming it.

The post At Session’s Midpoint, Reforms Loom Large On Legislative Agenda appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Rebecca Friedrichs is a public school teacher in California who has long struggled with the California Teachers Association, a union that advocates for policies that run counter to Rebecca’s beliefs. Because a majority of the teachers in Rebecca’s school district at one time voted to elect the California Teachers Association to represent them, every current teacher in the district—including Rebecca—is now forced to pay to support the Association.

Rebecca believes this violates her rights. And she has a pretty strong case.

Rebecca’s case is fundamentally about the right of an individual or a minority in a group to think differently than the majority. The majority of the teachers in Mrs. Friedrichs’ school district support a union with an agenda that she disagrees with. Rebecca stands apart as someone who wants to speak with her own voice.

The court’s decision could affect public employees here in Missouri. If the court sides with Mrs. Friedrichs, it would expand the first amendment rights of thousands of teachers, fire fighters, and other Missouri government workers. As a result, each Missouri government employee could choose whether or not to support the union that operates in his or her workplace.

The post Rebecca Friedrichs’ Supreme Court Case Could Expand Workers Rights in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last year’s paycheck protection bill would have required government unions (such as teachers unions and unions representing state employees) to obtain permission from employees before using dues or fees for political activity. The bill would have required unions to seek permission from employees only once each year; however, for that school teacher or social worker who opposes the politics of union bosses as a matter of conscience, such protection can make a big difference.

Consider the story of Terry Bowman, who started an organization dedicated to providing a voice to union members who feel silenced and marginalized by the union political establishment. Or Andrew Palmer, a public school teacher who started Conservative Teachers of America to provide an alternative perspective on public education. Both of these men bucked the mainstream opinion of their workplaces in order to make sure their voices were heard. This can be hard to do, but it’s a lot easier when the law protects people who swim against the current.

The post Missouri Paycheck Protection Is Back for 2016 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We’ve uncovered several union contracts, such as the contracts at the Jennings Fire Department, the Pattonville Fire District, and the Robertson Fire District, that require employees who choose not to join the union to pay a monthly fee equal to full membership dues. The fact that nonmember fees are equal to full dues means that even if you exercise your constitutionally protected right not to join the union, your monthly fees end up directly or indirectly paying for union politics.

Nonmember fees should be reduced in proportion with the amount of money the union spends on political activity. If 50% of a union’s revenues go to political activities, nonmember fees should be 50% of full member dues. In the contracts where nonmember fees are held equal to dues, a nonmember ends up subsidizing political speech unless that union engages in no politics whatsoever.

The union that holds contracts with the fire districts and departments mentioned above is the International Association of Fire Fighters. According to public filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission, this union has spent over three million dollars on political activities in Missouri over the last ten years. Nonmembers who didn’t have their fees prorated ended up paying for some of this.

Anyone subject to a union contract that doesn’t allow workers to opt out of union politics can fight back. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld a worker’s right to pay only that portion of union dues directly related to representation. A worker who objects to union political activity that he or she pays for should demand a refund of the portion of his or her dues that went to political activity. Below are some resources that can help:

http://www.nrtw.org/a/a_1_p.htm

https://www.unionfacts.com/article/political-money/understanding-beck-rights/

http://www.unionrefund.org/index.asp

The post Missouri Government Union Contracts Forcing Workers to Pay for Union Politics appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The thin silver lining here is that Mizzou's broken campus culture—not only among students, but among faculty as well—has finally been laid bare, providing the opportunity for policymakers and administrators to fix it.

So, where does Mizzou go from here? One important step would be to reestablish the University's bona fides as an institution that believes in free speech for everyone, not just those who support the politics of the university faculty. On point, L. Gordon Crovitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about a strong, student-supporting free speech policy that the University of Chicago adopted earlier this year. The policy has already been adopted at Purdue and Princeton, and which is now being pushed nationwide by FIRE, a student advocacy group.

You can find the University of Chicago's full report here, but I'd like to pull out two important paragraphs that could have written about Mizzou and its handling of free speech issues. (Emphases mine)

As a corollary to the University’s commitment to protect and promote free expression, members of the University community must also act in conformity with the principle of free expression. Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.

As Robert M. Hutchins observed, without a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry, a university ceases to be a university. The University of Chicago’s longstanding commitment to this principle lies at the very core of our University’s greatness. That is our inheritance, and it is our promise to the future.

A lot needs to change at Mizzou in the coming months. Administrators should start by unequivocally rejecting the university’s recent Orwellian nonsense on speech matters and commit to the free speech principles on which this country was founded, and possibly by adopting the University of Chicago policy construction. As the University of Chicago statement suggests, open inquiry and speech are the inheritance of all universities. It is up to policymakers and administrators to ensure that this inheritance is not wasted at Mizzou.

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