In April 2023, the Missouri House of Representatives voted to defund public libraries by stripping all $4.5 million in state aid from the fiscal year 2024 budget. It was the first time either chamber of the Missouri General Assembly had zeroed out library funding entirely, and the cut was openly framed as retaliation against library groups that had sued the state over a book-restriction law. The Missouri Senate later restored the money, and in November 2025 a Jackson County judge struck down the law that had provoked the lawsuit in the first place.
What the House Voted to Do
House Budget Committee Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage, removed the entire $4.5 million line for state aid to public libraries from the House’s version of the annual appropriations package. That package covered roughly $45.6 billion in state operating spending. The Republican-led House then passed the budget with library funding set at zero.
The $4.5 million is a small line in a budget that size, and no one presented the cut as a cost-saving measure. Smith and other supporters tied it directly to a pending lawsuit.
Why the House Did It
In February 2023, the ACLU of Missouri filed suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, challenging Senate Bill 775. That 2022 law created a new criminal offense under Missouri Revised Statute Section 573.550 for providing “explicit sexual material” to a student, a class A misdemeanor carrying up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.
The statute defined explicit sexual material as any visual depiction of sexual acts or genitalia, with narrow exemptions for works of serious artistic or anthropological significance and materials used in science courses. The lawsuit argued the law was unconstitutionally vague, in part because it failed to clearly define terms like “student,” leaving librarians and school staff unsure whether they risked prosecution over materials in their collections. The suit also argued the law was overbroad because it did not distinguish between actions taken in an official capacity during school hours and conduct in a person’s private life.
Supporters of the funding cut argued the state should not subsidize organizations suing to overturn legislation the General Assembly had just passed. Critics called the reasoning punitive and said organizations have a constitutional right to challenge laws in court without losing public funding as a consequence.
How the Senate Restored the Money
Once the House sent its budget over, the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Republican Senator Lincoln Hough of Springfield, put the full $4.5 million back. Hough publicly called the House cut “punitive” and said the dollar amount was small relative to the state budget but significant for the communities depending on it. He noted that libraries also provide computer and internet access for job seekers, not just books.
Because the two chambers passed different versions, a conference committee reconciled the differences before the unified budget went to the governor. Missouri’s governor has line-item veto power over appropriations but cannot add money the legislature did not include.
The Court Ruling That Followed
The lawsuit that provoked the defunding vote ultimately succeeded. On November 17, 2025, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs ruled that Section 573.550 was unconstitutional, finding it violated Missouri’s due process and free speech protections. The court issued a permanent injunction barring enforcement and concluded the statute was both unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
By the time of the ruling, the law had already prompted the removal of hundreds of books from library shelves across the state.
What the $4.5 Million Pays For
Missouri public libraries draw most of their funding from local property taxes, with state and federal dollars layered on top. The $4.5 million in state aid supports a statewide program covering collaborative services, summer reading programs, staff wages at smaller branches, and shared resources individual libraries could not afford alone.
The money matters most to small, rural libraries. A library in a larger city has a substantial local tax base and can absorb the loss of a few thousand dollars in state aid. A rural branch serving a small community may rely on that money for basic operations, including buying new materials and staying open through the summer. One librarian with nearly three decades of experience at a small county library said the loss would have a “devastating effect” on communities without alternative access to books, educational programs, and internet service.
State funding also props up shared infrastructure such as interlibrary loan networks, which let a patron at a small rural branch borrow from larger collections elsewhere in the state. When state-level coordination funding disappears, those networks degrade, and the libraries with the smallest budgets lose the most.
The Federal Funding at Risk
Zeroing out state aid would have put federal dollars in play too. Under the Library Services and Technology Act, Missouri receives roughly $3.3 million a year in federal grants distributed through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The federal government covers 66 percent of the program cost, and the state must put up a 34 percent non-federal match to qualify.
The LSTA program also carries a maintenance-of-effort requirement. To receive its full federal allotment, a state must keep library spending at no less than the average of the previous three fiscal years. If spending falls short, the federal allotment is reduced by the same percentage. Eliminating state aid entirely would almost certainly have triggered that penalty, costing Missouri a share of federal funding on top of the state cut. The IMLS director can grant a waiver for “exceptional or uncontrollable circumstances such as a natural disaster or a precipitous and unforeseen decline in the financial resources of the State,” but a deliberate legislative decision to defund libraries would not obviously qualify.
With the Senate’s restoration of the $4.5 million, the maintenance-of-effort problem never arrived. The vote stands as the first time a Missouri chamber tried to eliminate library aid outright, and the law it was meant to defend is no longer on the books.