A court later found that Barrett had acted outside his authority, but the incident made national headlines.

The petition says the defendants in the case — including Barrett, members of the Missouri State Public Defender Commission and Gov. Eric Greitens — “have failed to rectify the grave problems in Missouri’s public defender system,” despite every opportunity to do so.

“For three decades, the state of Missouri has known about the failings of its public defense system,” said Anthony Rothert, legal director at the ACLU of Missouri. “This chronic underfunding has resulted in an equally chronic constitutional crisis in Missouri that has cost the livelihood of thousands of Missourians who are denied justice because their attorneys couldn’t devote the necessary time or resources to their cases.”

Greitens did restore $2.5 million in withheld funding in his proposed spending plan, but it’s still $1 million less than what the Legislature approved last year.

Funding problems may be long term, but recently the system reached a critical point, Barrett told the Post-Dispatch last month.