Missouri High Court Decision Offers Lessons About Advancing Voting Rights

The Missouri Supreme Court in March rejected parts of a 2022 state law that would have made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters and NAACP to conduct voter registration drives.

The court in League of Women Voters of Missouri v. State held that the challenged provisions restricted core political speech, triggering application of strict scrutiny, a standard courts use to analyze laws that threaten the most fundamental rights. In so doing, it became the latest state high court to decline to apply the “relatively feeble” federal test for evaluating laws burdening the right to vote, known as Anderson-Burdick. Other state courts also have held voting restrictions must survive strict scrutiny — but have done so by holding that the right to vote is fundamental. Together, these decisions provide an illustrative path to vindicate voting rights in state courts.

In the last week of the 2022 legislative session, the Missouri Legislature passed H.B. 1878, which contained sweeping changes to state elections law: It prohibited individuals who “solicit” voter registration applications from being paid; required individuals who “solicit” more than 10 voter registration applications to register with the state; required such individuals to be registered Missouri voters over the age of 18; and prohibited anyone from “solict[ing] one into obtaining an absentee ballot application” — all without defining the word “solicit.” These prohibitions were backed by harsh criminal penalties. (Another suit challenged a stringent voter ID provision of the legislation; the state supreme court ruled that none of the groups challenging that portion of the law had standing to bring the lawsuit.)

The League of Women Voters of Missouri and the Missouri NAACP sued over the registration provisions, as well as the ban on “soliciting” voters to fill out ballot applications. A state trial court found the provisions violated state constitutional speech protections, observing that they were “antithetical to the core tenets of freedom of speech.” The state filed an appeal in the supreme court. (In Missouri, appeals in cases about whether state statutes are valid go directly to the state high court.)

On appeal, the state argued that the challenged provisions governed not speech but conduct: the “act of soliciting voter registrations and absentee ballot applications,” with no restrictions on the “ability to encourage voters to register or to vote absentee.” Laws restricting speech must survive strict scrutiny; under this test, the state would need to show the provisions advanced a compelling interest by the least restrictive means possible. Instead, the state insisted, the court should apply the Anderson-Burdick standard, formulated in two U.S. Supreme Court cases — 1983’s Anderson v. Celebrezze and 1992’s Burdick v. Takushi — and regularly used by federal courts to evaluate voting restrictions. The federal test balances the burden on voters against a state’s regulatory interests. Because voters often face significant empirical hurdles to show the negative impacts of a law, restrictions analyzed under Anderson-Burdick frequently stand.

Even if the legislation regulated speech, the state argued, it nonetheless targeted aspects of the state’s electoral process, warranting review under the Anderson-Burdick test. Because they furthered the compelling interests of combatting fraud and maintaining election integrity and placed a “minimal burden” on voting rights, the state maintained, the challenged provisions satisfied that test. The state’s brief did not mount an argument that the provisions could withstand strict scrutiny.

The court rejected the state’s arguments, employing a broad definition of “solicit” that included encouraging potential voters to register. Therefore, the court held, the challenged provisions aimed not to regulate the electoral process but political expression subject to free speech protection. Judge Mary R. Russell, writing for the majority, explained that the speech at issue — urging a person to register to vote — did not “take place on the ballot, at polling locations, or even within the voting process, as the purpose of this speech is getting people to register to vote, which must take place long before an election.”

The opinion cited Meyer v. Grant, a U.S. Supreme Court case striking down a Colorado law that prohibited payment to people circulating petitions for ballot initiatives. There, applying strict scrutiny, the Court held that circulating an initiative petition constitutes core political speech. “Encouraging others to vote is pure speech and, as core First Amendment activity, is entitled to the same protection as the circulation of an initiative petition,” Russell wrote. “Discussion of whether to register to vote and participate in the democratic process is a matter of societal concern.”

As regulations of speech, the court said, Anderson-Burdick did not apply to the challenged provisions; instead, they must survive strict scrutiny. While the court stopped short of raising issues with the Anderson-Burdick analysis itself, it declined to reflexively lockstep with federal courts and chose to critically examine the provisions in this case.

Applying strict scrutiny, the court held that even if the state’s compelling interests in “guarding election integrity and preventing voter fraud” were legitimate, the state had failed to show that the challenged provisions were narrowly tailored to its supposed justifications for preventing voter fraud. The law required anyone soliciting voter registration to be a registered Missouri voter and over age 18, for example. But the state could not show why requiring the person to be a voter — rather than just a resident — addressed its purported goal of solicitor “reliability.”

A dissent, written by Judge Ginger K. Gooch, agreed with the state that the legislation’s use of the word “solicit” applied only to the act of collecting voter registration applications, making the affected activity conduct, not speech.

The Missouri Supreme Court is not the first state high court to decline to apply Anderson-Burdick. In upholding a signature verification process for mail-in ballots, for example, the Washington Supreme Court last year expressly rejected Anderson-Burdick as “nebulous and unclear.” Instead, the court held in Vet Voice Foundation v. Hobbs, a law that “imposes a heavy burden” on the right to vote “is properly subject to strict scrutiny.” (The Brennan Center submitted an amicus brief urging the court to apply strict scrutiny for addressing burdens on the fundamental right to vote.)

At a moment when multiple federal courts have retreated from protecting voting rights, the Missouri Supreme Court decision offers another approach. By applying strict scrutiny to laws related to voting — whether because of the burden these laws put on speech or because voting itself is a fundamental right — state courts can advance citizens’ right to vote when federal courts won’t.

Justin Lam is counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.

Suggested Citation: Justin Lam, Missouri High Court Decision Offers Lessons About Advancing Voting Rights, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (May. 5, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/missouri-high-court-decision-offers-lessons-about-advancing-voting-rights