St. Louis is one metropolitan area that happens to sit in two states. Its gravity is Missouri — the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County — but the metro reaches across the Mississippi into the Illinois bottomland the region calls the Metro-East. A worker in Granite City or East St. Louis lives St. Louis: the same media market, the same river industry, the same commute downtown. The state line runs through the middle of a single metropolitan economy, and for asbestos exposure that history was shared on both banks — the city’s breweries, foundries, and rail terminals; the county’s manufacturing; and the refineries, steel, and chemical plants of the Illinois side.
What the state line does change is the courthouse. The City of St. Louis — an independent city, in no county — files in the Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit. St. Louis County files in the Twenty-First. And across the river, Illinois exposure is venued in Madison County’s Third Judicial Circuit and St. Clair County’s Twentieth. One metro, four venues. Choose your area below.