It could be the end of the road for the city of St. Louis’ attempt to overturn Missouri’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights—as a judge rejected its lawyers’ attempt to substitute a new aggrieved taxpayer for one who dropped out.
The long and winding litigation dates back to 2021, when then-Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed the bill of rights into law. The city filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation partly on the basis of the state’s Hancock Amendment, which says the state cannot require local governments to take on new duties without providing funding for them. The city had argued that the bill of rights ran afoul by requiring it conduct full hearings for officers who are suspended or fired, among other things.
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The Missouri Supreme Court struck down the city’s other arguments, but allowed the Hancock claim to advance. Critically, though, that part of the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Heather Taylor, a retired police officer who served as Mayor Tishaura Jones’ director of public safety from 2021–2023. Only a taxpayer—-not a city—can file a Hancock Amendment claim.
And after Taylor left her position with the city, lawyers for the city indicated that she no longer wanted to continue her role with the suit. In January 2025, the city sought to substitute a different city employee, Levaughn Smart, saying Smart would “cooperate fully.”
But lawyers for the state cried foul, and in a ruling last Thursday, Cole County Judge Brian K. Stumpe agreed with their argument. The idea that Smart would cooperate since Taylor no longer wanted to continue fighting the lawsuit, he wrote, “is not an acceptable rationale for substitution” under Missouri law. He also noted that the city was seeking not only to swap in Taylor, but to change the facts in the complaint: Unlike Taylor, Smart is not a city resident, which altered some parts of the lawsuit. The judge suggested the city needed a resident to challenge the claim, not just someone who pays the city’s earning tax.
That seemingly leaves the city with two courses of action, beyond simply giving up: Persuade Taylor to continue to fight the lawsuit, despite her previous reluctance, or start from scratch with a new suit and a new plaintiff. And Judge Stumpe seemed to counsel against the latter: His order suggested that, if the city filed a new lawsuit now, the state could argue that it’s waited too long; the bill of rights has been on the books for four years.
Chuck Hatfield, an attorney representing the city, said he had not yet been able to speak with the city so had no comment at this time. However, he said, “I do not think this is the end of the road on the lawsuit if the city wants to go forward.” A city spokesman also did not have a comment by press time.
But Brendan Roediger, an attorney who handles civil rights litigation against police as counsel at the firm Khazaeli Wyrsch, said that unless Taylor is ready to jump back into the fray, he’d be surprised if the city continues to pursue the litigation. “The judge’s point in the order is that this has now been going on for a very, very long time,” he says. “This law has been in effect, and it would be sort of ridiculous to declare it to violate Hancock at this point.”
Roediger said the litigation has been watched eagerly by lawyers suing the police. One part of the state’s bill of rights would require municipalities to indemnify officers when they get sued for misconduct—basically, to provide them legal representation and pay any judgments handed down against them. Previously, cities like St. Louis handled indemnification on more of a case-by-case basis, sometimes cutting loose officers who had a record of misconduct.
While waiting for the city’s lawsuit to play out, Hatfield’s team made appearances in as many as 20 cases in which the city is being sued, Roediger says. “If you see a case and there are private lawyers entering on behalf of the city, that usually means that it’s a case where those private lawyers are trying to tell the court we’re waiting on a decision from Jeff City,” he says. If the city ends up dismissing its lawsuit against the bill of rights, those 20 or so cases would move forward—and the city would then be required to foot those officers’ legal bills.
Roediger says he’s genuinely torn about how the bill of rights could change the landscape for people suing over police misconduct. “I think everyone who does civil rights work is caught between two positions,” he says. “We all represent families that have been devastated by the actions of police, the actions of prison guards, and indemnification, ultimately, is the only route to get compensation for those families. But the flip side of that is that indemnification means that individual officers, individual guards, are never held accountable.”
Complicating things further, since the Missouri legislature passed the bill of rights, the city police department has reverted to state control, and the question of whether the state or the city is on the hook for any legal judgements is now a separate issue. The city is now arguing that the state is responsible, as the Post-Dispatch recently reported.
