Some Missouri Senate committees are violating the state's Sunshine Law, the group Progress Missouri said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Cole County circuit court.
"Our democracy works best when there is transparency and accountability, and the Sunshine Law is a necessary tool to maintain both," Sean Soendker Nicholson, Progress Missouri's executive director and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a news release announcing the suit.
"The Senate will not be commenting on pending legal matters," Lauren Hieger, spokeswoman for the Senate's Republican leaders, told the News Tribune in an email.
The lawsuit "challenges actions by Senators Mike Kehoe, David Sater and Mike Parson, as chairmen of various Senate committees, and actions by the Missouri Senate, prohibiting Progress Missouri Inc. and its representatives from videotaping open meetings," then details a number of instances when the group said it was prohibited from taking video recordings of Senate committee hearings.
"The Defendant Senators have instructed Plaintiffs to not record meetings and Defendants' representatives have ordered Plaintiffs to cease recording meetings under implicit threat of removal and arrest," St. Louis lawyer Christopher N. Grant wrote.
The 16-page lawsuit claims those actions violated the state open meetings law's provision that "a public body shall allow for the recording by audiotape, videotape, or other electronic means of any open meeting. A public body may establish guidelines regarding the manner in which such recording is conducted so as to minimize disruption to the meeting."
The lawsuit described Progress Missouri as a "multi-issue progressive advocacy organization, and works to engage Missouri citizens around issues of state and local concern."
It has complained several times that Republican committee chairmen Kehoe, Parson and Satet have prevented the group from recording hearings.
The lawsuit noted the lawmakers cite the Senate's Rule 96, which includes: "Persons with cameras, flash cameras, lights or other paraphernalia may be allowed to use such devices at committee meetings with the permission of the Chairman, as long as they do not prove disruptive to the decorum of the committee."
In some instances, the lawsuit added, Progress Missouri was told it could not record a hearing because it isn't a member of the Capitol News Association.
"However," the lawsuit argued, "Missouri's Sunshine Law does not make special exceptions for the press as established by a Senate rule."
Hieger pointed to the Senate's recent investment of "considerable funds to modernize our committee rooms. As of today, the technology to make our hearing rooms more accessible to the public and press is in place. All of the Senate hearings are open to the press and to the public."
The lawsuit had not been assigned to a judge Wednesday night.