The Missouri State House of Representatives [official website] approved a bill [materials] Thursday to standardize state-wide ride sharing rules and have sent it to the desk of Governor Eric Greitens [official website]. If signed by Greitens, House Bill 130 will create uniform state-wide rules governing ride sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft. The bill was sponsored by Representative Kirk Mathews [official profile] who claims that the bill will create thousands of jobs in Missouri and will entice ride-sharing companies to increase their presence in the state because they would no longer be subject to ad hoc county to county laws. On the bill, Matthews said:

There’s enormous demand for these services in our state. The economic driver that this can be for our state, not just in the way that there will be thousands of new small businesses, but keeping Missouri competitive to compete on the national stage for high-tech businesses.

With the rapid growth of companies like Lyft and Uber, ride-sharing services have been among the most controversial business models [JURIST backgrounder] in recent history. Earlier this month, The US District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a preliminary injunction to block Seattle’s law that would allow drivers for taxis, Lyft and Uber to unionize [JURIST report]. In March a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California approved a $27 million settlement [JURIST report] in a class action lawsuit between Lyft and its drivers. The suit challenged Lyft’s characterization of the drivers as independent contractors. In December the European wing of Uber was indicted [JURIST report] in Denmark on charges of assisting drivers in their violation of taxi laws, although Copenhagen prosecutor Vibeke Thorkil-Jensen stated that this is just a test case seeking judicial assessment of Uber’s involvement in the illegal acts of two of its drivers. Last April Uber settled a lawsuit [JURIST report] brought by 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts regarding their status as independent contractors. In several states, ride-sharing companies have met significant legal opposition, frequently led by competitors such as the taxi industry. Other unresolved questions [JURIST backgrounder] surrounding this new business model continue to prompt debate among lawmakers.