Clara Bates
Reporter, Missouri IndependentClara Bates covers social services and poverty for The Missouri Independent. She previously wrote for the Nevada Current, where she reported on labor violations in casinos, hurdles facing applicants for unemployment benefits and lax oversight of the funeral industry. She also wrote about vocational education for Democracy Journal. Bates is a graduate of Harvard College and is a Report for America corps member.
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The legislation takes aim at ordinances passed in Kansas City and other Missouri cities that protect tenants from discrimination based on the source of their income — especially tenants who use federal housing choice vouchers to pay rent. -
Legislation to restrict marriage for Missouri residents under age 18 had been stalled by Republican critics for years. The law also stops child sex abusers from using non-disclosure agreements to silence their victims. -
One lawmaker said Missouri runs the risk of becoming a "sanctuary state for pedophiles" if the General Assembly doesn't pass a bill that would give victims of child sex abuse more time to press civil charges against their abusers. -
The bill has been called “Trey’s Law,” referring to the late Trey Carlock, who died by suicide in 2019 after being sexually abused at the Branson-based Kanakuk Kamps. It passed as part of a larger public safety package. -
Advocates worry that tens of thousands of vulnerable Missourians will lose Medicaid and food stamps because of new administrative barriers proposed by the GOP-led Congress. Missouri has already come under fire for failing to administer benefits on time. -
The U.S. Department of Agriculture requested personally identifiable information from SNAP recipients including names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers, along with total SNAP benefits received. Kansas, however, refused the request. -
Timothy Beckmann was arrested in late September but had not been convicted of any crimes yet. He was found dead Monday at the Jackson County Detention Center, months after being ordered into the custody of the Department of Mental Health. -
Missouri’s system for providing legal representation to families ensnared in the foster care system is highly decentralized and has little state oversight. The result is that some parents go without legal help at all, while kids stay in foster care far longer than the national average. -
The number of people waiting in jail to be transferred to state mental health facilities reached an all-time high in February. People are sometimes being incarcerated for longer than if they’d actually received the maximum sentence for the crime they were charged with. -
A federal judge said Missourians living in poverty "have gone hungry" due to bureaucratic hurdles that the state knows about but has failed to address.
