ST. LOUIS — On Tuesday, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey will be in a St. Louis courtroom for the first hearing in the process seeking to remove Gardner from office.
Judge John Torbitzky has scheduled a case management conference for April 18 and “all motions pending before the court at that time will be heard.”
Those motions include Gardner’s motion to dismiss Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s quo warranto petition.
One of the two main players in the legal battle is Andrew Bailey, a Republican appointed to the office in January to replace Eric Schmitt. Republican Gov. Mike Parson appointed Bailey, the former top lawyer for the Governor's Office, to replace now-U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt as the state attorney general.
According to his bio, Bailey graduated from the University of Missouri on an Army scholarship. His legal career started at the Missouri attorney general's office as an assistant attorney general. He also served as an assistant prosecuting attorney for the Warren County prosecuting attorney's office and as general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections.
He joined the Missouri governor's office in 2019, eventually becoming the top lawyer in the office.
On the day he was sworn in, Bailey touted himself as a constitutional conservative devoted to following the law, whether that be to enforce public access to their government or crack down on cities that take a lenient stance on unhoused people living on the streets, per a new law.
Less than a month after being appointed, Bailey officially launched his campaign for attorney general in 2024.
During his roughly three months in office, Bailey has delved into wedge political issues. He has called on school boards to adopt policies against children attending drag shows and warned CVS and Walgreens not to sell abortion medications.
Last week, he announced new restrictions on transgender care for adults and minors. The rule, which includes a required 18 months of therapy before receiving gender-affirming health care, is set to take effect on April 27 and expire next February.
The move is believed to be a first nationally and has advocacy groups threatening to sue.
The new restrictions come more than a month after Bailey announced he was investigating the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital after an employee alleged the center was providing children with gender-affirming care without informed consent.
Bailey has since expanded the investigation to other healthcare providers in Missouri, prompting a lawsuit from a Kansas City hospital.
