Kelly Glossip and Dennis Engelhard had been committed domestic partners for 15 years when Dennis, a Missouri State Trooper, was killed while responding to an accident on Christmas Day, 2009. Missouri offers survivor benefits to spouses of state troopers who are killed in the line of duty, but excludes committed same-sex partners from receiving those benefits.

As part of our “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed a federal lawsuit against a school district in Camdenton, Missouri, whose Internet filtering software blocks access to web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. The ACLU is joined in the lawsuit by LGBT organizations whose websites are blocked by the filter: Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbian and Gays (PFLAG), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Campus Pride, and DignityUSA, a Catholic LGBT organization.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri have filed a lawsuit charging the Salem Public Library and its board of trustees with unconstitutionally blocking access to websites discussing minority religions by improperly classifying them as “occult” or “criminal.”

On September 17, 2009, Personhood Missouri submitted a proposed initiative petition to be placed on the 2010 ballot for a constitutional amendment redefining the term “person” as “every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”