Democracy is at stake in Missouri's Medicaid expansion case

Among the thousands of words filed in legal briefs in the historic battle before the Missouri Supreme Court over the expansion of Medicaid to thousands of poor people who need it, three sentences stand out.

They are part of a brief that doesn’t even argue the merits of the case, which is about whether the Missouri Legislature and Gov. Mike Parson failed to follow the state constitution, as amended by voters in August. That’s when voters chose to expand Medicaid to cover about 250,000 more Missourians living in poverty.

The brief was filed by two state representatives, Crystal Quade of Springfield and Richard Brown of Kansas City. They are both Democrats. They are objecting to a brief filed by House Republicans which portends to speak for the entire House. That brief supports the Republican position that lawmakers have every right to ignore the state constitution. But the House didn’t take a vote to file such a brief. Despite having supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, Republicans can’t simply file a legal brief representing the position of a body whose members didn’t vote on that position, the Democratic lawmakers argue.

Quade and Brown’s brief concedes that if a measure in support of the Republicans’ brief been put to a House vote, the Republican majority likely would have authorized it. “But political realities do not diminish the necessity of upholding the requirement that members of the Missouri House must be afforded the opportunity to vote on these matters.”

Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/messenger-democracy-is-at-stake-in-missouri-s-medicaid-expansion-case/article_3cd5c2ac-11f0-52df-8848-9163eaf720d8.html