The People Vs. Preemption: St. Louis
By Carey Lamprecht, Paralegal & Research Coordinator May 11, 2026
By Carey Lamprecht, Paralegal & Research Coordinator May 11, 2026
For more than a century, Missouri politicians have tried to control how St. Louis is policed, often over the objections of its residents. And for many years, organizers like Jamala Rogers and Mike Milton have been building a different vision in St. Louis: real civilian accountability, transparency, and community power over what safety looks like in their neighborhoods.
St. Louisans have unfortunately paid the price for the police department’s lack of accountability. From 2009 to 2019, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department killed more people per capita than any other department in the country.
Now, that work is under threat again. Represented by ArchCity Defenders and Advancement Project, Rogers and Milton are suing the State of Missouri to stop a renewed state takeover of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Those harms are exactly why residents organized for stronger civilian oversight and public transparency.
The story of St. Louis is ultimately about who holds power. For much of the city’s history, the state has repeatedly stepped in to take away decision-making power from local residents, even when those decisions shape daily life and survival.
In 1861, Missouri seized control of the St. Louis Police Department during a political struggle tied to the Civil War. The state’s takeover of the police was part of a plan by Missouri’s governor, confederate sympathizer Claiborne Fox Jackson, to secure the federal arsenal in St. Louis and pull Missouri toward the Confederacy, while many in St. Louis supported President Lincoln. In other words, state control of St. Louis policing began as an attempt to override local self-determination and to help Missouri join the confederacy—and it has had long-lasting impacts ever since.
For more than 150 years, St. Louis residents had little meaningful control over the department that policed their streets. In 2012—after years of grassroots advocacy —Missouri voters passed Proposition A, returning the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to city control. That shift opened the door to building real civilian accountability systems, including the establishment of community oversight and a more transparent process for handling complaints. Organizers like Jamala Rogers and Mike Milton have been central to pushing those reforms forward so that public safety is shaped by residents, not politics.
The murder of George Floyd and the uprising that followed in 2020 galvanized Black communities into action. They turned their grief and rage into political power, making history in 2021 by electing the city’s first Black female mayor and first Black female Circuit Attorney. Yet while local government was being transformed, the state legislature remained largely unchanged — still dominated by white, male, conservative lawmakers resistant to that same wave of change.
On March 26, 2025, Missouri’s House Bill 495 (2025) took away control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) from local government and handed it to an unelected, governor-appointed board. It also charged the residents of St. Louis with the responsibility of funding this board.
With H.B. 495’s passage, the Governor-appointed, unelected Board of Police Commissioners now runs the SLMPD. They began by radically increasing the police budget, threatening the city’s solvency, and requiring the elimination of funding for other vital city services, and risking layoffs of city workers.
The state’s takeover silences community voices, threatens hard-won reforms, and diverts public dollars away from the services that keep neighborhoods healthy and safe. It paves the way to undo reforms won by grassroots racial justice activists like our client, Jamala Rogers: civilian oversight, limits on surveillance, budget scrutiny, and public transparency. We are also concerned that this takeover will disproportionately harm Black, brown, and low-income St. Louis communities. This is what preemption looks like.
Advancement Project is supporting ArchCity Defenders in representing clients Jamala Rogers and Mike Milton in their legal challenge to H.B. 495. Last week, we concluded a trial to stop this state takeover, protect community-led reforms like civilian oversight and transparency, and defend St. Louisans’ right to govern their own public safety decisions. By presenting evidence from our amazing clients, experts, the Mayor of St. Louis, we provided a strong record for the judge to weigh to determine if the passage of H.B. 495 was unconstitutional.
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