Supreme Court asked to deny AG request in Safe At Home case

Missouri's Supreme Court should deny Attorney General Josh Hawley's request for an order blocking a St. Louis County judge from getting a wife's home address in a divorce case, attorneys for the husband said in a 12-page filing Friday.

The filing was the response to Hawley's May 11 request for the seven-judge high court to block Circuit Judge Sandra Farragut-Hemphill from seeking the home address of a woman who participates in the state's "Safe At Home" program.

The program was established in state law in 2007, and is "administered by the secretary of state to protect victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault or stalking by keeping their home addresses confidential and authorizing the use of designated addresses for such victims and their minor children," Assistant Attorney General Jillian Meek Mueller reminded the high court in her paperwork seeking the Supreme Court's order.

The wife originally joined the Safe At Home program in April 2016.

The News Tribune generally does not identify sexual assault victims, and in this story identifies the woman in the St. Louis County divorce case only as "the woman" or "the wife." The husband in the divorce case also is not being identified by name in this story.

With Hawley's staff's help, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has sought to intervene in the divorce case since Feb. 8, after Farragut-Hemphill twice had ordered the wife to disclose her home address to the husband and to the attorney appointed to represent the couple's child during the divorce case.

Last month, when the judge ordered the wife for a third time to report her address - before leaving the courtroom - the wife complied.

Farragut-Hemphill denied Ashcroft's original motion to intervene, as well as the state's request for her to reconsider the decision. The state's eastern district appeals court declined to issue the order the secretary now is seeking from the Supreme Court.

The state argues the "Safe At Home" law gives the secretary of state the authority to determine who is a "certified" participant in the program, and the law requires "state and local agencies and the courts accept the designated address as a program participant's address when creating a new public record."

However, St. Louis County attorney Nathan Cohen, representing the husband, wrote last week, the state's petition should be denied for several reasons:

"Wife divulged her address to the court on April 13, 2017."

The attorney general and secretary of state should be using a different legal process.

Farragut-Hemphill's decision was sound, lawful and a correct application of the law.

The couple married in 2014 and, Cohen told the Supreme Court, the underlying divorce case has been contentious.

Cohen said Farragut-Hemphil ordered both parties to disclose where they resided during their periods of custody of the minor child. Cohen also said there had been no finding the wife was eligible for the Safe At Home program.

He argued the judge didn't accept the attorney general's requests to speed-up the hearings seeking the intervention, because the state had not followed the circuit court's established procedures.

Cohen wrote, after the initial intervention motion was denied, "a media campaign was undertaken against the judge, indicating that the judge called into question the integrity of the 'Safe at Home' program," and legislation was introduced "in recognition of the inherent flaws associated with the Safe at Home program statute."

The Legislature passed and sent Gov. Eric Greitens a proposed law change that, among other things, gives the secretary of state the right to intervene in proceedings involving the Safe At Home program.

The court has not indicated when, or if, it will take the case.