US Supreme Court again blocks Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map

By Rudi Keller

Missouri Independent

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday drove a stake through the heart of Missouri’s undead congressional map, ordering it be buried for the year and for voters to cast ballots in the districts they’ve used the past two election cycles.

In a unanimous decision, the court said that state law rules in the case.

“In short, as a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used in the 2026 congressional election,” states the ruling, which is unsigned.

The decision ends, for this election at least, Republicans’ effort to use a gerrymandered map to improve their chances of winning a seventh Missouri seat in the U.S. House.

It also caps three weeks of dramatic court action that changed the map in place for November five times, tested the jurisdiction and overlap of state and federal courts and exasperated local election officials responsible for conducting the vote.

In the final brief filed on behalf of Secretary of State Denny Hoskins before the ruling, state Solicitor General Lou Capozzi said it was already too late to prevent chaos in this year’s election.

“(T)he honest truth is that — regardless of what this court does — Missouri will not be able to run an orderly 2026 general election,” Capozzi wrote. “If required to use the 2025 map, Missouri can maintain the status quo that governed for about a year and will avoid disenfranchising individuals who voted in the primary election; but Missouri will undoubtedly violate (the federal law) deadline for sending ballots to military and overseas voters.”

The gerrymandered map drawn last year by the legislature targeted U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City by stretching the 5th District deep into Republican strongholds in rural counties along the Missouri River. Under the boundaries drawn in 2022, Cleaver won with 60% of the vote in each of the past two elections.

Using the 2022 map means voters in 28 counties will be in different districts in November than they were in the Aug. 4 primary. The changes impact the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th districts in addition to reversal of the gerrymander in the 5th District.

In a fundraising appeal sent jointly with 1st District U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell of St. Louis on Friday morning, Cleaver said it was “a never-ending case of ‘Groundhog Day’.” 

The decision found that the courts Sept. 10 order directing the use of the 2022 map had been misunderstood by both the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Chief District Judge Stephen Clark when orders to use the 2025 map were issued.

The order of Sept. 10 “meant that the 2022 map would be used in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri, absent further order of this court,” the opinion states.

The election would be thrown into turmoil if the 2025 map was used, the court stated.

“At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos,” the court stated, citing the brief filed by county clerks and election authorities with the 8th Circuit.

The decision means election officials, who began accepting absentee ballots Tuesday, can continue their preparations without interruption.

In Boone County in central Missouri, some voters in the 3rd and 4th districts would have moved into the 5th District and some from the 4th to the 3rd. County Clerk Brianna Lennon said 16 in-person absentee ballots and one overseas ballot had been cast by Friday morning.

While most are from voters in the 3rd District who would not have changed if the Supreme Court had upheld Clark’s order, five could not wait.

Other voters who have come to the office have decided to wait, she said.

“At least one person didn’t have an option,” Lennon said Wednesday of a voter who cast their ballot on Tuesday, the first day of absentee voting. “They were leaving today.”

In St. Charles County, 410 of the 1,889 absentee ballots sent locally and to overseas voters are in the 2nd District and could not be counted if the districts had changed, county elections Director Kurt Bahr said.

“If the courts change the map we will have to reach out to them and ask if they want a new ballot,” Bahr said.

Friday’s decision was the third time the Supreme Court acted on an emergency appeal related to Missouri’s congressional map. The path to the ruling included:

• The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Sept. 3 that the referendum petition from the political action committee People Not Politicians was a legal use of the referendum power and that the map passed in 2025 “never went into effect.”
• U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, a Republican from Lake Saint Louis, along with state Sen. RIck Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, and two voters sued Hoskins on Sept. 4 in the Eastern District of Missouri federal courts, arguing the federal constitution bars changes in district boundaries between the primary and general elections.
• The U.S. Supreme Court denied Hoskins’ appeal of the state Supreme Court ruling on Sept. 8. Shortly thereafter, Clark ruled in favor of Onder and Brattin and ordered Hoskins not to use any map except the 2025 map.
• On Sept. 10, the Supreme Court court stayed Clark’s temporary restraining order the 8th Circuit ruled “and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court, if such a writ is timely sought.”
• The 8th Circuit held oral arguments last week and on Monday issued an order to Clark to issue a permanent injunction barring the use of any map except the 2025 map. Under the directive of the 8th Circuit, Clark stayed his order until 5 p.m. Sept. 28.

The basic legal question the justices had to resolve is whether it is too late to change the map used to nominate candidates in the primary. On Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court said it was not, because a successful referendum drive also suspends the legal effect of a bill signed by the governor until approved by voters.

People Not Politicians has fought in court both to have a vote on the map and to prevent its use in this year’s election. Hoskins, backed by Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and legal teams hired by the Republican Party, has argued that a referendum on a congressional map is unconstitutional and that once it was used in the primary, the 2025 map had to be used in the general election.

The map will be on the ballot as Proposition A. People Not Politicians this week purchased about $800,000 of broadcast ads that will run through Election Day in the state’s three largest media markets, tracking by The Independent shows.

In their filing to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Onder and Brattin argued that it would create no hardship for the court to order election officials to use the 2025 map.

Onder, Brattin and the voter plaintiffs argue that switching maps between the primary and general elections violates their rights to equal protection under the laws, among other federal constitutional and election law questions.

In its most recent order, on Sept. 10, the court stayed the Sept. 8 order from Clark until the 8th Circuit ruled “and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court, if such a writ is timely sought.”

The stay would end when the court denied the petition or issued a final ruling if it takes the case.

The deadline for requesting certiorari is Dec. 21.

In their filing to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Onder and Brattin said the Monday deadline set by the 8th Circuit was designed to prevent that delay.

“The panel did not pick that date by accident,” they wrote. “It expressly anticipated, and expressly rejected, the possibility that applicants would run out the clock by waiting until the ordinary certiorari deadline to file — long after Missourians have voted.”

Waiting that long would mean there is nothing to decide, they wrote.

“This case will be moot before a certiorari petition could realistically be resolved, and it presents nothing worthy of this court’s discretionary review in any event,” they wrote.

In a response brief filed Wednesday afternoon, attorneys for People Not Politicians argued that the high court’s Sept. 10 stay order is being circumvented by the 8th Circuit decision. Brattin and Onder are the ones seeking to unsettle the election and inject uncertainty, the attorneys wrote.

“Respondents ask this Court to sanction a federal intrusion into an election that is already underway, requiring Missouri to change its congressional map after votes have already been cast,” they wrote. “Nothing in their opposition justifies that request.” 

Republican attorneys from all but one state gerrymandered to favor the GOP since the 2024 elections, plus more than a dozen others, elections filed a brief in support of Onder and Brattin.

Led by Florida, which finalized its map on May 4, and Texas, which redistricted in 2025, the only holdout was North Carolina, which has a Democratic attorney general.

The Republican attorneys general argued that it was the state Supreme Court’s order that created the confusion over the map. The court ignored arguments that the map could not be changed because it had been used in the primary or that candidates had invested heavily in campaigns that now had to address new constituencies.

“Wittingly or not, the Missouri Supreme Court has steamrolled each and every one of these considerations,” the Republican attorneys general wrote. “It issued a bare-bones injunction requiring the use of a different electoral map without addressing the inevitable chaos that will follow.”

In its order, the state Supreme Court laid the blame for confusion about which map was legally in effect on Hoskins, who could have issued his finding that the referendum was unconstitutional at any time during the year. 

His “delay created the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties of which he complains,” the state Supreme Court opinion states.

The Campaign Legal Center, American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation filed a brief in support of sustaining the Missouri Supreme Court order.

The state’s highest court correctly ruled on both Missouri and federal law and the Supreme Court should let that decision stand. And, the brief stated, it is too late to change the election now.

“Pursuant to this court’s orders and the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling on state law, election administration has proceeded under the 2022 map, ballots have already been mailed, and voting has begun,” the brief states.

In the brief filed on Hoskins behalf, Capozzi urged the justices to order Missouri to use the 2025 map while noting that past decisions indicate the court “views this situation differently.”

“However, if this court grants a stay (in favor of the 2022 map), voter and candidate confusion will persist,” Capozzi wrote, “Missouri will endure a fifth court-ordered change to its map in September, hundreds of thousands of voters in the primary election will be disenfranchised, and candidates will be forced to run in new districts they have not campaigned in over the past year.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.