Republican Governor Overturns Voters and Repeals Paid Sick Leave

With the stroke of a pen, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed off on legislation repealing the paid sick leave provision of a ballot measure that roughly 58 percent of Missourian voters approved in November.

The now-struck provision, which went into effect in May but will cease at the end of August, required employers to give workers one hour of earned paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, and 56 hours (or just seven days) of paid sick time per year. Businesses with fewer than 15 employees were only required to give workers 40 hours per year.

In a statement touting how “conservative leadership” supports Missourian “families,” Kehoe called the provision, which would have helped an estimated 728,000 private sector employees in the state, “onerous.”

In November 2024, the paid sick leave mandate passed with 1.69 million votes—not far off, notes Elizabeth Crisp of The Hill, from the 1.75 million with which Kehoe took the governorship in November. Republican lawmakers sprang into action to walk back the will of their constituents after the ballot measure passed, and, within months, a bill to repeal it had passed the state House along partisan lines.

Senate Republicans passed the bill after using a rare procedural maneuver to quash a Democratic filibuster. The bill garnered the votes of all but one Republican lawmaker, Lincoln Hough, who thought his fellow Republicans should have let debate run its course.

“Our rules of that chamber are unique to foster compromise and push people to negotiate,” Hough told The Springfield Daily Citizen at the time, calling the vote a “degradation of the institution of the Missouri Senate.”

When the legislature sent the bill to Kehoe’s desk, Senate Minority Leader Dough Beck told St. Louis Public Radio: “What we saw today was the Republican supermajority, whether they did it because of corporate greed or their corporate overlords telling them what to do, they took away sick pay for millions of workers in the state of Missouri.”