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“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,� he said on Tuesday, standing in front of Cole County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Limbaugh, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …�

The judge cut him off. “I’m aware of what it says,� Limbaugh said.

The question before the court, one being pushed by Schock on behalf of his client, Daniel Wayne Wallace, is whether Limbaugh will apply the text of that constitutional amendment, and several others, to the application of the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, or MIRA. That’s the law that allows the state attorney general to seize assets of men and women who are serving time in state prison. For a man like Wallace, who is doing time on an assault charge, the law can be devastating.

Wallace’s mom died last year in a car crash. She left him $12,500 in insurance proceeds. It’s about all the money he has. He planned to use it from prison to support his wife and son. Then Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey swooped in and seized it under the reimbursement act, a law that has been around since the late 1980s. After I wrote about Wallace earlier this year, Schock wrote him and asked if he wanted an attorney. Wallace agreed. Now Schock and another attorney, Dave Nelson of Illinois, are trying to get the MIRA law declared unconstitutional.

“I would suggest to this court that taking this much money is shocking to the contemporary conscious,� Schock said. He had become aware of the law when he helped some other clients avoid the seizure of funds they had won in a legal settlement while they had been held in a county jail.

The attorneys are arguing the law violates multiple elements of the state and federal constitutions, because it takes the inmates’ property — money — with little public benefit. Two other attorneys — Irene Karns of Columbia, and Michael Shipley of Kansas City — are making similar constitutional arguments against the law in other cases.

The various MIRA lawsuits every year raise a tiny fraction of 1% of the state Department of Corrections budget, while seizing up to 90% of the inmate’s assets, often when they have obtained a legal settlement, or insurance proceeds, when a relative dies. Most of the people who are sued under the law — which is similar to laws in most other states — don’t even hire attorneys. Some write letters to the court from their jail cells. Others just ignore it and see their money taken from them without ever appearing in court.

Even when a judge exercises discretion and reduces the amount of money the state can take in a MIRA case — as Limbaugh did recently in the case of Ronnie Pope — that, too violates the constitution, Schock says, because the law doesn’t establish any standards by which a judge can decide who gets to keep their money and who doesn’t.

“There is no criteria for the court to consider its moral obligation,� Schock argued.

The arbitrary nature of the law and how it’s applied by the attorney general’s office was on display the day Schock made his arguments. During a break in the hearing, the attorney general’s office announced it was dropping its MIRA case against Robert Rulo, who, like Wallace, received life insurance proceeds when his mom died while he was in prison.

Rulo’s case was headed toward closure, without Rulo ever making an appearance in court, but during a break in Wallace’s trial on Tuesday, the attorney general’s office dropped the case against Rulo without explanation. Court records indicate another state agency — the Family Support Division — might have seized Rulo’s money for back child support.

“The state can’t take what I don’t have,� Rulo told me in an email.

Assistant attorney general Drake Murdock, who is handling the Wallace case, argued that the law, which has been upheld in some previous constitutional challenges — some brought by inmates without attorneys — is constitutional.

“There’s no fundamental right to insurance proceeds,� Murdock said. “Just because it’s a small amount doesn’t mean it’s unconstitutional.�

Next month, Schock will make the same arguments again, in a case involving another client, Brian Owens, who received about $12,000 in life insurance proceeds when his father died earlier this year. The harm to his clients when the state seizes their money, ostensibly to help pay for confinement costs already funded by taxpayers, is immense, and there’s no constitutional way to apply the MIRA law, Schock argued.

“It’s a house of cards,� he says. “It violates the concept of ordered liberty. The entire statute needs to fail.�