House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, answers reporters’ questions following adjournment of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Attorneys for House Speaker Dean Plocher argued Monday that a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him by the chamber’s chief clerk should be dismissed because he had no power to retaliate against her.
In a hearing before Cole County Associate Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe, attorneys for the House and Plocher said because Chief Clerk Dana Miller is elected by a majority vote of the 163-member House she is out of reach for Plocher — even if he wanted her fired.
The only way she could have been fired or demoted, they said, is by a majority vote of the 163-member House.
“This involves a power struggle between two co-equal elected officers of the House,” said Chuck Adamson, an assistant attorney general representing the House.
In response, Miller’s attorney argued that it was the threats of retaliation included in a letter circulated in the House that triggered the state whistleblower statute.
“They tried to get her removed,” said Kevin Baldwin, Miller’s attorney. “They tried to change and alter the conditions of her employment.”
Records show Dean Plocher charged the state for travel already paid for by his campaign
At the end of the hearing, Stumpe gave both sides two weeks to file final pleadings before he decides whether to dismiss Plocher, end the case by dismissing the lawsuit outright or to let the case continue.
Miller in May sued Plocher, Rod Jetton, his chief of staff, and the Missouri House. The lawsuit was being filed, Miller and Baldwin said in May, because obstruction and intimidation by Plocher and Jetton scuttled an ethics inquiry into allegations of wrongdoing by Plocher.
Miller dismissed her case against Jetton earlier this month.
Plocher, who in August finished fourth in the GOP primary for secretary of state, became embroiled in controversy last year when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.
A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.
An investigator’s report detailed how some potential witnesses allegedly refused to speak out of fear Plocher would use his power as speaker to retaliate against them, while others did not appear because Plocher decided who the committee could compel to testify. And Plocher refused to cooperate with the attorney hired to collect evidence for the committee.
“This is a case about accountability,” Baldwin said to Stumpe on Monday.
In arguments to Stumpe, Lowell Pearson — Plocher’s attorney — said one of the key elements Miller would need to have a successful whistleblower case is that she was targeted for disclosing information not otherwise known to the public. Nothing Miller was concerned about wasn’t already being discussed in public, he said.
The case, he said, “reflects a weaponization of (the whistleblower law) in a manner that was never intended.”
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The speaker and chief clerk of the House are the two officers of the chamber named in the Missouri Constitution. Both are elected by a majority vote as the chamber reorganizes after an election.
Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She was elected chief clerk in 2018 and has held that post under four speakers. Miller is not seeking re-election as chief clerk.
In court filings seeking dismissal, Plocher claimed he, personally, was not Miller’s supervisor and that the dispute is a political question, not a personnel issue.
“There is no way an individual, Speaker Plocher, can be a public employer,” Pearson said Monday.
Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.
When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”
In the motion to dismiss, Pearson argues that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to Miller by a third party — not Plocher — and are therefore hearsay.
The threats took the form of a letter being circulated to House members seeking to get Miller fired, Baldwin said. That amounts to adverse action and retaliation under the law, he said.
Baldwin also said the power of the speaker makes the letter a credible threat to her job.
Pearson, however, said the limitations on the speaker’s power means the threat was not credible. If Plocher couldn’t muster the votes to fire her, he said, the threat was meaningless.
“You can’t warn someone of an act you can’t perform,” he said.
The ethics investigation and whistleblower lawsuit have racked up big legal bills for Plocher but his political donors have covered at least some of the cost up to now. According to campaign disclosure forms filed in September, a PAC called Missouri United paid David Steelman and his law firm $21,000 on Aug. 23. The PAC paid Pearson’s law firm $52,000 on Aug. 28.
Steelman and Pearson defended Plocher while he was under investigation by the Missouri House Ethics Committee earlier this year. The committee has not paid any additional legal bills on Plocher’s behalf. It had about $56,000 on hand in late October, according to the latest filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
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