St. Louis Drops Lawsuit over Missouri Takeover of Police amid Rift with Officials

ST. LOUIS — City Hall this week abandoned a lawsuit aimed at stopping the state takeover of the St. Louis police department amid a rift between two top officials.

Mayor Cara Spencer said the suit, filed last week on the final full day of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ term, had missed the mark. She said her team was weighing options for what to do next.

Aldermanic President Megan Green said Spencer had it wrong, and said she planned to refile the lawsuit as soon as possible.

The back-and-forth marked the latest tension over how the city should handle one of the biggest changes to the police department since City Hall took it over in 2013, 150 years after the first state takeover.

Both Spencer and Green have said they support local control, where the mayor and aldermen make policy for the department rather than a board largely picked by the governor.

But they have differed on how exactly to fight the new takeover law approved in Jefferson City last month. Spencer was irritated when Jones and Green filed a lawsuit without involving her in the planning. And Spencer and Green have yet to meet on what to do next.

Green’s suit said the state law infringed upon city officials’ First Amendment rights and imposed an unconstitutional requirement to increase spending on the police department. It asked a federal judge to declare the whole law invalid.

Then last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp said the city and Green needed to show they had a right to sue to continue the case, and gave the city until Monday to amend the suit.

Schelp noted that states cannot generally be sued directly in federal court. But there is an exception when state officials are enforcing an unconstitutional law. Chuck Hatfield, the prominent Democratic lawyer representing Green in the case, said it might have passed muster with an amendment naming the governor and attorney general as defendants.

But neither Green nor the city law department filed anything by Schelp’s deadline Monday, setting the stage for dismissal.

It wasn’t exactly clear what would happen next.

On Tuesday, Spencer put out a statement deriding the Jones-Green lawsuit as deficient.

“We are evaluating our options and weighing the merits of refiling a sound suit in state court,” she said.

Green pushed back in a statement of her own.

“Our lawsuit against Missouri’s unlawful state takeover was rejected on a technicality,” she said. “We plan to refile as soon as possible and I hope Mayor Spencer joins me as a plaintiff so we can fight for St. Louis together.”

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