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This piece originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 17, 2025.
Missourians should feel free to speak their minds on matters of public concern. Unfortunately, due to a serious shortcoming in current state law, those who do speak out face significant risk.
That risk comes in the form of strategic lawsuits against public participation, or “SLAPPs.”
SLAPPs are abusive, retaliatory litigation designed to silence the defendant through lengthy and expensive legal proceedings. SLAPPs normally take the form of meritless defamation suits that also serve as a warning to other would-be speakers not to speak in the first place.
Even when a defendant ultimately wins a SLAPP, these suits often have a lasting impact on a defendant’s reputation, cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and disrupt the speaker’s life. The average American doesn’t have the resources to fight these claims and could wind up paying a large settlement or face other unwarranted consequences simply to avoid the arduous legal process.
Sadly, residents of Missouri are more at risk of being victims of this type of predatory litigation than most Americans. Though there is a chance this legislative session to change that.
My organization, the Institute for Free Speech, analyzes anti-SLAPP legislation across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to determine the strength of a given law and assign a letter grade based on the protections provided. Unfortunately, Missouri is among the dwindling number of states that do not have strong protections in place to deter SLAPP suits. In our most recent Anti-SLAPP Report Card, Missouri earned a “D-,” scoring just 26 out of 100 possible points.
Missouri’s failure to safeguard its residents’ First Amendment rights puts it at odds with an overall national trend toward better anti-SLAPP laws. The state also falls behind neighbors like Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, and Oklahoma, all of which earn some form of “A” grade.
As our report explains, the most troubling flaw with the current state statute is that it only protects a very narrow scope of speech, leaving Missourians susceptible to lawsuits if the statements they made were not undertaken or made in connection with a public hearing or public meeting.
The best way to cure this and other defects is through the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, or UPEPA.
UPEPA is a model anti-SLAPP statute created in 2020 by the nonpartisan Uniform Law Commission. UPEPA protects a very broad swath of speech and creates additional helpful processes in these types of lawsuits, including an expedited hearing to resolve litigation prior to a formal trial to determine the plausibility of the suit, potentially relieving the defendant from a lengthy discovery process and full trial.
These laws also require that victims of SLAPPs to recover attorney’s fees from plaintiffs who bring such suits, creating a deterrent for SLAPPs.
The momentum for such laws continues to build nationwide. Just weeks ago, Idaho became the latest state to adopt a UPEPA-based anti-SLAPP law, and Ohio enacted its own perfect-scoring law in January.
Missouri now has the opportunity to join this positive national trend.
Luckily, the current legislative session saw the Missouri House and state Senate introduce measures to establish UPEPA, including SB503 and HB83, which includes UPEPA and has been approved by two House committees. If either of these bills become law, Missouri’s report card score would improve to a well-deserved perfect 100.
The people of Missouri deserve to feel safe when exercising their First Amendment rights as Americans and speaking their minds on matters of public concern. State lawmakers should see the Public Expression Protection Act through to the finish line and solidify free speech rights across the state.
Gov. Phil Murphy recently signed a new law — passed unanimously by both houses of the legislature — that strengthens the free speech rights ...
South Carolina currently provides no protection against a key threat to free speech: strategic lawsuits against public participation, or “SLAPPs.”
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