U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri

United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri
(W.D. Mo.)
Appeals to	Eighth Circuit
Established	March 16, 1822
Judges assigned	6
Chief Judge	David Gregory Kays
Official court website

The United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri (in case citations, W.D. Mo.) is the federal judicial district encompassing 66 counties in the western half of the State of Missouri. The Court is based in the Charles Evans Whittaker Courthouse in Kansas City.

As of March 2017, Judge David Gregory Kays is the Chief Judge, and Thomas Larson is the current Acting United States Attorney.

Missouri was admitted as a state on August 10, 1821, and the United States Congress established the United States District Court for the District of Missouri on March 16, 1822. The District was assigned to the Eighth Circuit on March 3, 1837. Congress subdivided it into Eastern and Western Districts on March 3, 1857. and has since made only small adjustments to the boundaries of that subdivision. The division was prompted by a substantial increase in the number of admiralty cases arising from traffic on the Mississippi River, which had followed an act of Congress passed in 1845 and upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1851, extending federal admiralty jurisdiction to inland waterways. These disputes involved "contracts of affreightment, collisions, mariners' wages, and other causes of admiralty jurisdiction", and litigants of matters arising in St. Louis found it inconvenient to travel to Jefferson City for their cases to be tried.

When the District of Missouri was subdivided, Robert William Wells was the sole judge serving the District of Missouri. Wells was then reassigned to serve only the Western District.

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