Ladue

In the early 1990s, the city tried to force a woman to take down a yard sign stating “Say No to the War in the Persian Gulf, Call Congress Now” as it violated a city law. The ACLU sued, arguing that the right to place the sign was protected by the 1st Amendment. The ensuing legal battle went to the United States Supreme Court which unanimously ruled, in City of Ladue v. Gilleo, that the right to place the sign was protected by the Constitution.[16] In 1986, the City of Ladue won a case against E. Terrence Jones and Joan Kelly Horn, a couple who had lived together for four years and who each brought children from a previous relationship.[17] Ladue officials had requested that they marry or leave their home. The Missouri Court of Appeals sided with the city, stating in City of Ladue v. Horn that “A man and woman living together, sharing pleasures and certain responsibilities, does not per se constitute a family in even the conceptual sense. […] There is no doubt that there is a governmental interest in marriage and in preserving the integrity of the biological or legal family. There is no concomitant governmental interest in keeping together a group of unrelated persons, no matter how closely they simulate a family. Further, there is no state policy which commands that groups of people may live under the same roof in any section of a municipality they choose.”[18] Under Chapter 213 of the Missouri Human Rights Act (§213.040.1),[19] passed after the Ladue v. Horn case, housing discrimination on the basis of familial status is now an unlawful practice. In 2010, the former chief of police, Larry White, sued the City of Ladue for wrongful termination.[20] The suit was dismissed by the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in 2012 and the dismissal upheld by the Missouri Court of Appeals in 2013.[21] Press reports have indicated the town’s municipal court judge fixed at least one ticket for a well-connected person.[22] Despite comprising only 0.88% of the local population, black drivers in Ladue comprised 575 (of 4107 total, or 14%) stops in 2014. The resulting “disparity index” indicates a black driver was 15.98 times more likely than the average driver to be stopped by the Ladue Police Department in 2014, but the police department contends the statistics are skewed by the local racial composition.[23]