The Will of the People B’Damned

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The Republican-led Missouri Legislature is once again showing open contempt for the voters.

In November 2024, Missourians approved Proposition A by a decisive 58–42 margin. The measure raised the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour beginning January 1, required automatic inflation adjustments, and mandated paid sick leave for workers.

Voters were clear. The outcome was not even close.

Many of the proposition’s opponents—including the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, the Missouri Restaurant Association, and the Missouri Grocers Association—invested very little energy in defeating the measure at the ballot box. Instead, they chose to dismantle it afterward. Rather than persuading voters, they turned to the courts and, when that failed, they turned to the legislature.

The Republican supermajority eagerly obliged.

Legislators stripped out the paid sick leave provision and removed the automatic inflation adjustments, leaving only the $15 minimum wage intact. That partial survival was small comfort; it was not the law voters approved, but at least workers could still expect the wage increase.

Or so it seemed.

State Senator Joe Nicola introduced SB 1325 on January 7 of this year. This bill permits employers to pay workers under 18 a reduced minimum wage of $12.30 per hour. It creates yet more exceptions to a wage standard that was approved by voters.

Supporters of SB 1325 frame it as a reasonable accommodation for younger, less experienced workers. Critics see something else entirely: an incentive for businesses to favor cheaper teenage labor by firing employees on their 18th birthday.

But beyond the policy debate lies a deeper issue.

Why is a legislature revisiting the core substance of a law that voters approved?

Campaign finance patterns surrounding the bill’s sponsor, Senator Nicola, may offer insight. Significant donations flowed through a Political Action Committee (PAC) directly associated with him, including contributions from major donors and other PACs. While legal under Missouri’s rules, such structures reveal how money can flow through multi-layered channels, obscuring its origins and magnifying the influence of wealthy interests. In practice, they allow deep-pocketed donors to exert outsized political leverage while remaining comfortably within Missouri Ethics Commission regulations. In other words, the rich have found a loophole that allows them to send an unlimited amount of money to a candidate.

The influence of big money is difficult to ignore, especially when it cancels the will of the people.

As of this writing, SB 1325 has advanced out of the Senate’s Economic and Workforce Development Committee with a “do pass” recommendation. Testimony presented to the Committee followed predictable lines: business groups supported it, and labor representatives opposed it. But the testimonies made no difference; 70% of the committee are Republicans, so the result was already baked in long before the testimonies began.

Missourians did not vote for a partially implemented law. They did not vote for a wage increase without inflation protection. They did not vote to revisit the minimum wage months later through targeted exemptions. They did not vote to surrender sick leave. But that made no difference. The coffin for Proposition A is all but complete. Just a few more nails, and it’ll be buried without a funeral.

This episode reflects a growing pattern in Missouri politics: when voters pass measures that conflict with the priorities of powerful interests, lawmakers search for ways to dilute, delay, or dismantle them.

Not by winning elections, but by overruling the voice of the people.

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