The annual State of the Judiciary address to a joint legislative session scheduled for Wednesday was canceled after Senate Republicans threatened to skip the event in protest. House Majority Leader Alex Riley said he was informed that the Senate would not attend the joint session shortly after he took the floor on Wednesday. With no joint session to convene, the House canceled the address and then adjourned for the day. At issue was the Missouri Supreme Court’s recent ruling throwing out SB 22, a bill passed last year that would have given the Secretary of State more authority to rewrite ballot summaries. The court’s ruling stated that the bill violated the Missouri Constitution’s requirement that amendments not change the original purpose of the legislation. State Senator Rick Brattin, the sponsor of SB 22, stated that the ruling was one of many recent instances of the court wanting to “act like they are the legislature”.
