UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Missouri Court Strikes Down Post-Ferguson Cop Law

The law sought to fight police bias.

Missouri's Supreme Court on Monday struck down part of a law intended to eliminate police bias in the wake of police brutality protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The 2015 law, which applied to police in St. Louis County, required police agencies to be accredited, and limited the revenue police departments could generate from traffic and court fees. Under the law, traffic and legal fees could only make up 12.5 percent of the county’s police departments' revenue, unlike elsewhere in the state where the figure is capped at 20 percent. The law was ruled unconstitutional for imposing different requirements on St. Louis County police departments than on police departments elsewhere in the state.