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AMERICANALMANAC (Sadie Smith) - Supreme Court blocks Missouri's GOP-drawn congressional map for the second time Thu Sep 10 18:53:38 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court shut down a Republican-drawn Missouri congressional map for the second time in three days, leaving voters to decide the redistricting fight at the ballot box this November. The court issued a brief, unsigned order on September 10 suspending a federal judge's ruling that would have forced Missouri to use the new […] The post Supreme Court blocks Missouri's GOP-drawn congressional map for the second time appeared first on American Almanac .

The U.S. Supreme Court shut down a Republican-drawn Missouri congressional map for the second time in three days, leaving voters to decide the redistricting fight at the ballot box this November. The court issued a brief, unsigned order on September 10 suspending a federal judge's ruling that would have forced Missouri to use the new map in the midterm elections. No justice publicly dissented. The order offered no explanation, just a two-word result that ended, at least for now, a weeks-long legal tug-of-war between state and federal courts over which congressional boundaries Missouri voters will use in November. The decision marks the second time in three days the Supreme Court sided against the map. On September 8, Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined to block a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the disputed map must go before voters in a referendum before it can take effect. A federal judge then stepped in almost immediately, issuing a competing order that would have required the new map anyway. The full Supreme Court swatted that down within days. Missouri's redistricting saga started with a presidential push The Missouri Legislature approved the new congressional map last year at President Trump's urging. Trump had pressed Republican-led states to redraw their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms, and Missouri was the second GOP-led state after Texas to attempt mid-decade redistricting following the 2024 election. Ten states overall, most of them Republican-controlled, have changed their congressional maps as part of the broader effort. The new Missouri map would have broken up a Democratic-held congressional district in Kansas City, giving Republicans an advantage in seven of the state's eight House seats, up from the current six-to-two split. With Republicans holding a slim majority in the U.S. House, the seat mattered. Under the redrawn lines, a district held by Democrats would have flipped to one Republicans were expected to win. But the map drew immediate opposition. An anti-gerrymandering group called People Not Politicians Missouri collected more than 300,000 signatures to put the redistricting changes to a public vote through a ballot referendum. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, rejected the ballot measure, arguing that the state constitution does not allow ballot measures over congressional redistricting. Opponents of the map accused Hoskins of waiting until the last possible day to issue that rejection, a move they characterized as a deliberate delay. The legal fight escalated through Missouri's courts and eventually landed at the U.S. Supreme Court. State and federal courts issued dueling orders in a matter of days The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the disputed map had not legally taken effect and must be approved by voters before it could be used. That ruling came days before the state's ballot was scheduled to be finalized, and after Missouri had already held its August primary using the new map's boundaries. That timing created a practical mess. The Associated Press reported that more than one million potential voters, nearly one in four statewide, could face significantly different district boundaries between the August primary and the November general election. Missouri Chief Justice W. Brent Powell acknowledged the disorder during a contempt hearing against Secretary of State Hoskins, saying, "We're in a precarious situation." Hoskins had initially defied the Missouri Supreme Court's order to revert to the old 2022 districts, citing a competing federal court order as justification. He instructed local election officials to use the new districts instead. The state Supreme Court ordered him to appear at a contempt hearing. Only after the U.S. Supreme Court's September 10 ruling did Hoskins comply. Missouri Judge Ginger Gooch, in an earlier proceeding, had found that the referendum petition was valid. She stated plainly that "the referendum petition was legal, sufficient and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise." That finding undercut Hoskins's rationale for blocking the ballot measure in the first place. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway vowed to keep fighting Missouri's attorney general framed the court decisions as historically unprecedented. Hanaway argued in a statement that the ruling broke new ground: "Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election." Republicans contended that the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling had inflicted "unprecedented chaos" on the state, a characterization that carried weight given the whiplash voters experienced between the August primary and the September court orders. The RNC's election integrity communications director, Ally Triolo, said in a statement that the ruling "pulls the rug out from under voters who already cast their primary ballots." On the other side, Abha Khanna, a partner at the Elias Law Group representing People Not Politicians Missouri, declared the fight over. USA Today reported her statement: "Missouri Republicans have played their last card, and they lost." Khanna also said the ruling ensured "that Missouri will not be allowed to ram through an egregious gerrymander before the voters have a say." Lawyers for People Not Politicians had argued in filings that "a federal district court cannot transform an unlawfully administered primary into a federal constitutional command that the State continue violating its own law through the general election." Redistricting battles stretch far beyond Missouri Missouri's case is one piece of a nationwide redistricting fight playing out ahead of the November midterms. The Supreme Court has weighed in on redistricting disputes involving at least six other states over the past year: Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, New York, and California. Results have been mixed, some outcomes favored Republicans , while others benefited Democrats. The pattern is clear enough. Both parties are using the courts to gain every possible advantage before voters go to the polls, and the Supreme Court has become the final referee in fights that used to be settled by state legislatures on a once-a-decade schedule. Mid-decade redistricting, once rare, is now a live weapon in the battle for House control. In Missouri, the practical result is that the state will revert to its post-2020 census map for November, preserving the current six-to-two Republican advantage rather than expanding it to seven-to-one. Voters will still get their say on the new map through the referendum, but not until the ballot question is properly placed before them, exactly what the state Supreme Court demanded. Progressive activist Keith Rose told reporters he welcomed the finality. "We need some finality. We need to focus on the real issues that Missourians care about," he said. That sentiment, at least, crosses party lines, Missouri voters watched their district lines change after they had already cast primary ballots, then watched courts fight over which map counted. Similar redistricting disputes have reshaped races in other states. In Tennessee, Republican-drawn maps have forced Democratic candidates to compete under boundaries designed to dilute their support. The national stakes are identical everywhere: control of the House hangs on a handful of seats, and every redrawn line matters. The Missouri saga exposed a real tension in the Republican redistricting push. Drawing maps aggressively is legal and politically rational. But when a state's own supreme court, unanimously, says the process skipped a required step, and the U.S. Supreme Court agrees twice in three days with no dissent, the problem is not the goal. It is the execution. Voters deserve maps drawn through a process that holds up in court. When the process collapses, the people who pay the price are not the lawyers or the legislators, they are the voters who showed up in August and now face a different ballot in November. The post Supreme Court blocks Missouri's GOP-drawn congressional map for the second time appeared first on American Almanac .