No reinstatement of pandemic unemployment aid that Missouri cut early, judge rules

Unemployed Missourians who lost federal pandemic unemployment benefits when they were cut off by Gov. Mike Parson in June are not entitled to back pay or reinstatement, a Cole County judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Jon Beetem said the governor was well within his rights to opt the state out of the federal program. He delivered his ruling just a day after attorneys for five Missourians who lost the benefits asked him to block Parson’s decision.

In May, Parson pulled Missouri from several federal pandemic relief programs in an attempt to spur residents back to the workforce. About half of the states did the same, all but one of them Republican-led.

The federal enhanced benefits are set to end for the rest of the nation next week.

Programs halted early included an extension of unemployment payments to gig workers and others who don’t qualify for the traditional program. The state also opted out of extending benefits for regular recipients who have exhausted payments under the state program, and a $300 weekly supplemental payment that added to recipients’ regular checks.

The payments stopped in mid-June. At the time, 56,000 workers were receiving regular state unemployment benefits (which would have come with the $300 supplement), according to a Department of Labor and Industrial Relations spokeswoman, and 90,500 were receiving federal enhancements.

Missouri’s maximum weekly payment for regular unemployment benefits is $320.

Missouri Jobs With Justice, representing the workers who lost benefits, filed suit this month hoping to get the decision blocked and the benefits back-paid. The unnamed workers in the lawsuit had been unable to find a new or comparable job, they said, and faced the threat of foreclosure or other harms without the benefits.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in nearly a dozen states where the benefits were cut early. The results have been mixed. Some have resulted in court rulings reinstating payments, but final decisions from the states’ supreme courts are still pending.

An attorney for Missouri Jobs With Justice argued Monday that by withdrawing from the enhanced programs, Missouri officials had violated state statutes requiring them to maximize federal funds in the unemployment program.

But Beetem wrote that those statutes only apply to the traditional unemployment program, and did not create “an obligation on the state to pay temporary, newly-created federal benefits under a longstanding law unrelated to such benefits for a completely optional program.”

“Too often, businesses can’t compete with the steady stream of federal benefits,” Attorney General Eric Schmitt, whose office defended the lawsuit and who is running for U.S. Senate, said in a news release. “Today’s ruling affirmed the legality of Governor Parson’s decision to terminate these temporary benefits and will hopefully lead to the hiring of workers for businesses that desperately need the help.”

Missouri Jobs With Justice disputed the effectiveness of cutting the benefits.

A recent study has found states that cut the benefits early had a small jump in employment, but that 7 of 8 workers who lost benefits did not end up getting a job.

“We are obviously disappointed in the decision,” said Richard Von Glahn, policy director for Missouri Jobs With Justice. “The Governor said this would create job growth, but data shows it hasn’t. Instead his policies continue to wreak havoc on the lives of the people who he is supposed to represent and care for.”