Today, the Missouri House of Representatives passed House Bill 575, which contains two new provisions applicable to statewide initiative petition circulators. First, circulators must be a Missouri resident "or physically present" in the State "for at least thirty consecutive days prior to the collection of signatures." Second, circulators are prohibited from being "paid anything of value that is based on the number of signatures collected." This article previews the constitutional landscape in the event the current version of the bill passes the Senate and is signed by the Governor.
The First Amendment protects political expression. Because petition circulation involves core political speech, similar provisions have been challenged nationwide on First Amendment grounds, with varying results in the Courts of Appeals on the first provision and uniformity on the second.
Residency Requirement
With respect to residency requirements, the Supreme Court has held that while States may not require petition circulators be registered voters, it suggested that a residency requirement would be a permissible, less restrictive means of protecting against fraud, by ensuring that circulators could be subpoenaed. Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 525 U.S. 182 (1999); see also Lux v. Rodrigues, 561 U.S. 1306, 1308 (2010) (Roberts, C.J., in chambers) (stressing that Buckley was "careful ... to differentiate between registration requirements, which were before the Court, and residency requirements, which were not").
Following Buckley, the Eighth Circuit (which encompasses Missouri) upheld North Dakota's residency requirement for circulators because it ensured circulators were subject to the State's subpoena power, residents could still circulate'and...
