The Missouri Sunshine Law is the common name for Chapter 610 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri, the primary law regarding freedom of the public to access information from any public or quasi-public governmental body in the U.S. state of Missouri.[1]
The Missouri legislature passed the statute in 1973 to ensure that the state government would be open and accountable, in the spirit of the 1967 Freedom of Information Act, which governs records requests to the federal government.[2]
The statute has been changed several times, most recently in 2017.[3]
The law gained attention during the 2020 COVID pandemic, when it was used to reveal personal information about people who reported alleged lockdown breaches.[4]
In a 2014 interview with St. Louis Public Radio, Jean Maneke, a consulting attorney for the Missouri Press Association, has expressed that the law's biggest shortcoming is a de facto lack of enforcement, saying "even though the law does have enforcement provisions in it, but it is a very difficult law to enforce." In the same article, Chris McDonald (the author), explains how in another investigation he had to wait 60 day to receive documents from a Sunshine requests (20 times the delivery goal set in the statute).[20]
Requests to agencies of the state's government are even less likely to followed through on as the Missouri Attorney General's office is not likely to prosecute state agencies because they are their "clients." Complainants who have problems requesting from state agencies have been told to "contact a private attorney" instead of having the Attorney General pursue for them.[21]
In a 2021 interview with The Joplin Globe, Jean Maneke, a consulting attorney for the Missouri Press Association called the cost of access "the No. 1 obstacle to the public" in accessing the files made public through the law, saying "when a requester cannot specifically identify what record is sought, it hinders fast location of that record, which drives up the 'search' portion of the cost."[22]
There have been attempts to raise the cost of access for getting and searching for documents through sunshine requests.[23]