Missouri congressional map before US Supreme Court for third time this month

Jacob Barker, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sep 23, 2026

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ST. LOUIS — Missouri's congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court once again, the third time the nation's high court has been asked to stop efforts to overturn a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruling.

The state court found that a Republican-drawn map passed last year had never taken effect because opponents gathered enough signatures to suspend it pending a statewide vote.

The emergency motion to the U.S. Supreme Court from the signature-gathering group People Not Politicians was filed late Tuesday night. It came in the wake of a federal appeals court ruling Monday ordering a St. Louis federal judge to issue a new order going around a previous stay from the high court.

"A lower court cannot demand the same relief this Court has stayed by cloaking it in a new order," the group wrote in its motion to the U.S. Supreme Court, the latest of several this month in a convoluted legal battle over Missouri's congressional map and, essentially, a single seat in Congress.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who considers emergency appeals from the region, quickly ordered responses by 1 p.m. Wednesday.

The latest trip to the U.S. Supreme Court comes amid a pitched battle for Congress and an effort from Missouri Republican leaders to redraw Missouri's congressional map to give their party one more seat in the House. Their preferred map would carve up a safe Democratic seat in Kansas City, tilting Missouri's congressional delegation from a 6-2 Republican majority to a 7-1 split.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, at President Donald Trump's request, called a special session last year for an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting amid similar moves in other states. Opponents gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to trigger a referendum. Missouri's constitution allows citizens to suspend new laws from the legislature until a public vote if enough signatures are gathered.

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until the day of the August primary to claim redistricting was not subject to a referendum. But the state supreme court overruled him, suspending the new map until residents could vote on it in November. The court's ruling meant hundreds of thousands of voters would cast ballots in different districts than the ones they voted in during the primary, but the state supreme court said that was Hoskins' fault for running out the clock on certifying the petition signatures.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to overturn the state court's ruling in an appeal brought by Hoskins and Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a fellow Republican.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis, and state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican who won the primary to represent what was expected to be a new GOP seat, sued in St. Louis federal court, alleging the switch in district maps violated their constitutional rights. Judge Stephen Clark, an appointee of President Donald Trump, agreed with their arguments and issued an order conflicting with the Missouri Supreme Court ruling by barring the use of any map but the 2025 one.

The U.S. Supreme Court stayed that order as well, without any justices dissenting. The Missouri Supreme Court, meanwhile, held Hoskins in contempt for telling election authorities to use the 2025 map in violation of its order. He avoided penalty by reversing course after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its stay of Judge Clark's order.

State law governs elections, and the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked lower federal courts from making last-minute changes in state election law disputes.

Even so, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative in the country, then ordered expedited arguments before it. On Monday, a three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by Trump, sided with Onder and Brattin and ordered the lower court to issue a new order requiring the use of the 2025 map. The appeals court did, however, ask Clark to pause his order for a week to give the Supreme Court time to weigh in.

Clark complied almost immediately, again issuing a federal order blocking the state court's interpretation of Missouri law.

Meanwhile, local election authorities have already sent ballots to overseas and military voters, per a federal deadline, and some have already returned their ballots. Absentee ballots became available to regular voters Tuesday.

Legal scholars said this week they expected the Supreme Court to block the 8th Circuit's ruling because there was no reason the court would change its mind on the constitutional claims raised by Onder and Brattin, especially when such a reversal would cause more disruption to an ongoing election.

People Not Politicians, in its motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, called the 8th Circuit Court's Monday ruling "unprecedented."

"The Eighth Circuit’s order does not merely undermine this Court’s stay order," they wrote. "It requires the district court to issue a permanent injunction granting the exact same relief this Court stayed in the exact same case."