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MO Voters Win Big Against GOP Mid-Term Redistricting
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Today, Lady Justice has spoken against the Missouri GOP
When the Texas GOP kicked off the recent gerrymandering wars, the Missouri GOP wasn’t far behind them. Last September, the GOP-dominated legislature voted to create a new map of legislative districts for the members of the MIssouri delegation of the US House of Representatives, carving up Kansas City to dilute the democratic strength in Kansas City by attaching the pieces to more rural areas.
In particular, the boundaries of MO-05 — the district of longtime Representative Emanuel Cleaver II (also a former mayor of KC) — went from being relatively geographically compact in and around the portion of Kansas City south of the Missouri River, to covering less of the city and its immediate suburbs, and now stretching halfway across the state. To make this possible, the GOP moved some of those democratic voters into MO-04, currently held by GOP Rep. Mark Alford, a former longtime local Fox TV news anchor and holder of many rightwing positions. The GOP’s plan is for Alford to win despite the new democratic voters in his district, while their chosen rural candidate defeats Cleaver. According to Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics, the new map was very well designed in order to accomplish just that (click the link to see the two rival maps).
A coalition of Democratic political groups and non-partisan good government groups moved immediately to collect the thousands of signatures to repeal this new map and retain the old one via the state’s initiative process. There was a long back and forth in the courts about getting the petitions themselves certified, but once they were, the group easily gathered the required number of signatures, and easily filed them with the Republican Secretary of State, Denny Hoskins, to be certified and place the initiative on the ballot. Hoskins received these signatures this past June, and for 59 days he sat on them.
Hoskins had a couple of big reasons for sitting on the signatures. First, if an initiative petition is accepted that is aimed at overturning a newly enacted piece of legislative business that has not yet taken effect, a pending ballot initiative puts on hold the implementation of whatever it was that is being challenged. In this case, that means that had the petition had been certified in early summer, the primary elections in August would have been held under the old 2022 map, not the new one, thus defeating the GOPs drive to affect the 2026 congressional elections and support Trump.
Second, he was able to game the election calendar to required those primary elections to use the new maps, since the petitions had not yet been certified. There was a court battle to either force the Secretary of State to move faster or require the use of the 2022 map during the primary, but the judges reluctantly concluded that they could not do this since the Secretary of State had not ruled at that time on whether the petition would be accepted, so there was nothing for them to overrule. “Come back once the Secretary of State rules, and then we’ll look at the substance here.”
Finally, on the day before he was required to announce that sufficient signatures had been gathered (or not, if he dared), Hoskins stood before the microphones and announced that while the Missouri Constitution allows the people to overrule “any act of the legislature,” that doesn’t apply here because the Missouri Constitution did not have a specific statement that allowed initiatives to be used to deal with redistricting maps. Only ordinary laws could be overturned, not redistricting maps. The next day, the primary elections were held using the 2026 maps, and shortly thereafter, the legal fight began again. The GOP lawyers prevailed at the lower courts, basing their argument both in their (odd) reading of the Missouri Constitution, but also the language of the US constitution that directs the state legislatures to handle redistricting. Yesterday, the battle reached the Missouri Supreme Court, who promised to rule quickly as the deadline for finalizing ballot language is September 8. A fast ruling needs to happen, so that the ballots can be printed and mailed out to those requesting absentee ballots shortly thereafter.
Today, they made their ruling, and it was a beauty. Take it away, Missouri Independent:
Missourians will vote in November on the gerrymandered congressional map muscled through the Legislature in 2025, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday.
The decision puts a congressional plan before voters for the first time since 1922 and affirms that the Missouri Constitution’s provision allowing voter-initiated referenda applies to redistricting plans as well as almost all other legislation.
“Because the plain language of… the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum as to ‘any act of the general assembly’ and no exception applies, the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely,” Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the unanimous opinion. “This court reverses the circuit court’s judgment.”
The court not only put the referendum on the ballot, it ordered Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to use the district lines drawn in 2022 for this year’s general election.
“The secretary and all of those acting in concert with him are restrained and enjoined from implementing, using, or mandating the use of the congressional redistricting (plan from 2025) for the November 2026 general election or at any other time thereafter unless and until (the act) is approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election and takes effect 30 days thereafter,” Gooch wrote.
Of course, you know where this is going.
“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” [MO Republican Attorney General Catherine] Hanaway said. “Our office will move immediately to seek relief from SCOTUS. We are confident that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised—which is what today’s decision does.”
OK, let’s look at that. Never before has a state legislature gamed the system to provide so little time prior to an election for a legal challenge to be made, so to claim this is unprecedented is to acknowledge your own gamesmanship here. But you be you, Madam Attorney General.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that she has already drafted an emergency appeal to SCOTUS via the shadow docket, that will only need tweaking once she weaves the argument more specifically to fit with the specific language of the MO Supreme’s opinion. On the surface, this looks like a slam dunk for SCOTUS to use the shadow docket to wring their hands and say “Oh, we can’t possibly rule within a week on the merits, so we direct the MO secretary of state to conduct the election using the 2026 map instead.”
That won’t be an easy sell, however. From the MO Supremes ruling, reformatted here for clarity to distinguish all the citations:
The secretary [of state] correctly limited his analysis to the Missouri Constitution because both: (1) under section 116.120.1 the secretary’s review is limited to “examin[ing] the petition to determine whether it complies with the Constitution of Missouri and with this chapter [116]” and does not extend to whether the referendum petition complies with the United States Constitution or other federal laws; and (2) the United States Supreme Court has held on multiple occasions the United States Constitution permits a state to authorize a referendum as to legislation drawing
new congressional districts. See- Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrandt, 241 U.S. 565, 569 (1916) (rejecting as “plainly without substance” the argument that a state constitution’s authorization of a referendum as to legislation drawing new congressional districts violates the Elections Clause)6;
- see also Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221, 230-31 (1920) (noting Hildebrandt held “the referendum provision of the state [c]onstitution, when applied to a law redistricting the state with a view to representation in Congress, was not unconstitutional”);
- Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 576 U.S. 787, 805 (2015) (“In upholding the state court’s decision [in Hildebrandt], we recognized that the referendum was part of the legislative power in Ohio, legitimately exercised by the people to disapprove the legislation creating congressional districts.” (internal citation and quotation omitted));
- id. at 840 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (“Hildebrandt simply approved a [s]tate’s decision to employ a referendum in addition to redistricting by the Legislature. The result of the decision was to send the Ohio Legislature back to the drawing board to do the redistricting.” (internal citation omitted));
- Luther v. Hoskins, 730 S.W.3d 567, 582 n.7, 583 (Mo. banc 2026) (Wilson, J., dissenting) (noting the United States Supreme Court has approved the use of both the referendum process and a gubernatorial veto for legislative acts purporting to draw new congressional districts, with Missouri using the former in 1922 and the latter in 1932).
A mere three years ago, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Hildebrandt and again rejected the argument the Elections Clause prohibits a state referendum as to legislation drawing new congressional districts. Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1, 25-26 (2023) (concluding “redistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the [s]tate’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the Governor’s veto” and rejecting “the
contention that the Elections Clause vests state legislatures with exclusive and independent authority when setting the rules governing federal elections” (internal quotation omitted)). The Supreme Court affirmed: “A state legislature may not create congressional districts independently of requirements imposed by the state constitution with respect to the enactment of laws.” Id. at 26 (internal quotation omitted).That’s a lot of SCOTUS opinions to try to argue against. On the other hand, given what SCOTUS has done through their shadow docket in other cases to reach partisan republican outcomes, I wouldn’t bet the farm that SCOTUS would reject this appeal without comment. On the third hand, the Missouri Supreme Court is made up of 5 justices appointed by Republican governors and 2 appointed by Democratic governors — and they ruled UNANIMOUSLY against Hoskins, Hannaway, and the Republican-dominated legislative map.
So we’ll see what happens next. Tonight, though, a whole bunch of Missourians who have been making Good Trouble by fighting for a year to protect the right to vote are celebrating.
*raising a glass*
To Good Trouble and the folks who make it!
*ding*
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