The bill makes it illegal to discriminate in academic settings based on a protective hairstyle. Protective hairstyles are styles that are designed to protect textured hair such as braids, twists, locks, or afros.

NAACP TALKING POINTS

• Students are being punished for wearing their hair naturally without harsh chemical treatments or a shaved head. Black girls are more frequently disciplined and treated with less respect in their schools when they wear their hair naturally. Black boys are more frequently disciplined and are often punished for “breaking dress code” when they wear their hair in braids or other styles that prevent breakage.
• Maintaining black hair in non-natural styles is expensive and dangerous. Black women with straight hair have to spend 3-4 hours at the salon every 3-4 weeks to maintain the style. At-home products tend to be harsher than salon products and are more likely to be applied in ways that cause damage.
• This bill doesn’t allow students to wear their hair “any way they want to.” It is narrowly tailored to cover hairstyles that are necessary to prevent damage to hair and are historically viewed as a racial characteristic.

Juvenile legal system costs, fees, and fines undermine public safety, harm youth and families, and create economic and racial disparities. The Debt Free Justice Bill is a national collaboration of individuals, organizations, and communities to abolish these fees and fines. 

Currently, a young person charged with even a minor offense can face financial obligations such as administrative court costs, diversion program costs, behavioral health assessments fees, electronic ankle monitor costs, detention and probation supervision fees, and even the cost of their own public defender or prosecutor. This bill removes all those financial burdens but leaves in place actual consequences for misbehavior.

NAACP TALKING POINTS

• Reduces Repeat Offenders: Every state prioritizes positive interventions for youth in the juvenile legal system, but fees and fines undercut positive development. Placing an impossible financial burden on young people to pay when they do not have their own income source undermines youth development. Requiring parents to pay leads to family tension, interfering with the positive support children need. When a child or their parents are unable to pay the fines and fees, it results in extra fines and additional criminal charges. This means you take a child who made a mistake and turn them into a lifelong criminal.
• Creates a More Fair System: When some families are able to afford the crimes their children commit and others cannot, it creates a system where some children are facing real consequences and others are not. This creates a system of unequal outcomes depending on the income of the family. Some children will not face any consequences and others will end up in a cycle of appearances and detentions for lack of ability to pay.
• A Growing Number of States are Eliminating Fines and Fees for Juveniles: Across the country, states have recognized that fees and fines harm children and families, undermine public safety, and don’t help state and local budgets. In the past few years, fee and fine elimination bills have passed into law in multiple states and localities, often with overwhelming bipartisan support.

In 2017, the Missouri Legislature passed a bill that greatly reduced anti-discrimination and anti-segregation laws. The Missouri NAACP fought hard to prevent the bill from passing. Since that time, legislators have continually introduced further legislation that elminates protections for employees and business owners in the workplace. We are committed to restoring the protections that were removed in 2017 and preventing future reductions.

NAACP TALKING POINTS

• Discrimination and different treatment for people based on their God-given characteristics is still a problem. Protected characteristics in the employment context include race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, or age as it relates to employment, or disability.
• Anti-discrimination laws are not about what a person is allowed to think or believe, they are about how we treat the people we work with and whether people feel safe in their workplace. Only repeated and severe patterns of inappropriate behavior, or employment decisions based on a protected characteristic, violate the law.
• Employment and public accommodation claims are difficult to prove in the best of circumstances, the scales should not be weighted against the person who is supposed to be protected. Employees are protected from illegal employment decisions and patterns of discrimination. Business owners are protected from contracting decisions made based upon protected characteristics.
• Every individual is protected from housing decisions and government action based upon protected characteristics. 
• This is not "Affirmative Action" this is preventing decision making from being based on something other than merit.

The Missouri legislature is attempting to take away the rights of the voters in St. Louis to run their own local government. The Missouri NAACP supports the locally elected government officials in our State. The Governor and General Assembly should not override the voice of local voters by undermining the officials they elected.

NAACP TALKING POINTS

• State control of the local police blocks real accountability to the people the police are sworn to protect. In every city in the Country except Kansas City, the voters elect a local government that hires and oversees the local police force. This would take away any ability for the local elected officials to do the job they were elected to do - run the local government. The Mayor and Board of Aldermen would no longer be able to control the budget and policies or even choose the head of the local police department. All of these functions will be under a statewide board of unelected people appointed by the Governor. The ability of the local voters to make their voices heard will be diluted by the statewide vote for Governor. We have already seen this happen in Kansas City.
• These efforts single out the two areas in the State with meaningful concentrations of black and brown residents for control by the State government. It is impossible to ignore the clear racist motivations behind the move to block accountability of the KC and St. Louis Police Departments to the people they serve. St. Louis finally regained control of their police department a decade ago. The statute that gave control to the State Board of Police Commissioners in the first place was passed by Claiborne Fox Jackson, a pro-slavery Missouri governor who didn’t want St. Louis, which supported the Union, to have control of its own ammunition arsenal. The same racist thought process is in play today. Springfield has a very similar crime rate to Kansas City and it is still rising, but no one is talking about needing to take over their law enforcement agency. The state legislature doesn’t want a city with different political leanings and racial makeup than the Governor to be able to make decisions about how they govern. 

The world is full of people with different backgrounds, goals, and values. Anti-discrimination programs, cultural competency training, and broadening the scope of education better prepares us for those interations. When we remove the opportunity for expanding our circles and education, we stiffle innovation and restrict growth. We cannot compete on a global scale without having a global education.

The Missouri Voter Protection Coalition (MOVPC) is a non-partisan statewide network of advocates who collaborate to advance free, fair, and accessible elections in Missouri and build a pro-democracy movement rooted in civil rights movement building.

MADP works to stop executions by working with legal teams to advocate for justice for those condemned to death and uplift the humanity of those on death row. As an actively executing state, we need your help amplifying each and every #ClemencyCampaign.