Media coalition sues MSHP to restore public access to crash details
Published 8:12 pm Tuesday, October 20, 2026
The Missouri Press Association and the Missouri Broadcasters Association have filed a lawsuit against the Missouri State Highway Patrol, alleging the agency is illegally redacting information from traffic and boating crash reports.
The petition, filed Friday in Cole County Circuit Court, joins Gray Local Media, Warden Publishing Company and managing editor Roxie Murphy as plaintiffs. They are asking the court to order the highway patrol to provide full, unredacted copies of crash reports, restore complete public online access and pay civil penalties and attorney’s fees.
According to the petition, the highway patrol provided public online access to unredacted crash reports for nearly 30 years, and the agency’s website previously stated all information on the reports was considered an open record that could not be withheld from the public. However, the lawsuit claims that sometime in 2024, the agency began blacking out names, addresses, phone numbers and other details of individuals involved in crashes, including fatalities. In correspondence with the plaintiffs, the highway patrol cited the Federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act as the reason for the redactions.
The plaintiffs argue the redacted documents violate the Missouri Sunshine Law, which designates the crash records as open incident reports. Media organizations rely on the unredacted reports to verify the identities of individuals involved in accidents and to report on public safety matters.
In a Tuesday press release announcing the lawsuit, MPA Executive Director Chad Stebbins noted that Missourians have had the right to see the records for decades. When the government blacks out the names of those killed on public roads, he said, the entire community is kept in the dark.
The Quill first reported on Nov. 15, 2024, that the highway patrol had stopped identifying the names of drivers involved in crashes.
