The Center for Growing Justice

The Center for Growing Justice is an all-volunteer collective of community advocates, social workers, and legal professionals.

Since 2022, the vast majority of our organization's efforts have been devoted to our STL Name & Gender Marker Change Mutual Aid project, which assists transgender and other marginalized individuals in Missouri and Southern Illinois with obtaining legal name and gender marker changes on their birth certificates and state IDs.

In 2024, our volunteers assisted more than 600 community members with these free services. All with a budget of less than $15,000.

Inspired by that work, we are the driving force behind an effort to create a free, gender-affirming, low-barrier Municipal ID Card. Our "Gateway Card" will be issued by the City of St. Louis and will greatly benefit survivors of domestic violence, immigrants, and people without stable housing.

Our History
The Center for Growing Justice was founded in 2014, in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson Uprising, by St. Louis based community organizers and civil rights attorneys, in partnership with the National Lawyers Guild.

Originally named "The Project for Law Enforcement Accountability for Justice" (or "PLEA for Justice"), we formally changed our name in 2019 to "The Center for Growing Justice" to reflect our expanding scope of work, including providing free legal support and social services to immigrants and LGBTQ St. Louisans during the Trump Administration.

In late 2022, we began the process of an organizational restructuring. Following volunteer and community feedback, The Center for Growing Justice decided to embrace a systems-change approach in our work, with a goal of addressing the root causes of disparities in the civil legal system.