The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt Missouri Republicans a major setback in a high-stakes redistricting fight ahead of November's midterm elections, granting an emergency request that blocks use of a GOP-backed congressional map while litigation continues. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, referred the application to the full court, which stayed a federal judge's order that had reinstated the Republican-friendly districts. There were no dissents on the High Court.
The dispute centers on congressional maps enacted by Missouri Republicans that would reshape the state's eight U.S. The court's action is consistent with a decision earlier this week, when Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected an emergency bid to overturn a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that had prevented the Republican-backed map from taking effect ahead of the midterms. "Good for the Court!" Vikram Amar, Daniel J.
Dykstra Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law, told Newsweek following the ruling. Newsweek reached out to the Missouri Secretary of State for comment Thursday morning. The second appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court over the issue came from the new map's challengers, People Not Politicians—a group which sought a referendum on the plan. In a statement shared with Newsweek Thursday, Richard von Glahn, executive director of the group, said, "The law is the law, the Missouri constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court. Over 305,000 Missouri voters—Republicans, Democrats and Independents took action to block this political power grab last fall.
People, not politicians, will have the final say when they vote NO on Proposition A this November." The decision from the Supreme Court to hear the case and grant a stay came Thursday morning, only two days after Kavanaugh rejected the state's original appeal. People Not Politicians, which successfully challenged Missouri's 2025 congressional map in state court, argued that the federal district court improperly overrode the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling that the map was suspended by a referendum petition. The group told the Supreme Court that Missouri election officials should follow state law and use the older 2022 map in November, arguing that neither the Equal Protection Clause nor Article I, Section 2 guarantees voters the right to remain in the same congressional district for both primary and general elections.
It also said the federal court's order created election chaos by requiring use of a map that Missouri's highest court had ruled "is not the law and never has been the law." Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and the state, meanwhile, argued that switching back to the 2022 map after the August primary would violate the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of voters. They said many Missourians would be forced to vote in the general election for candidates they had no opportunity to help nominate in the primary, while election officials were already printing ballots under the 2025 map. The United States, supporting Missouri, made similar arguments and said changing maps between the primary and general election would create "two classes of voters" because some voters would remain in the same district while others would be moved into different ones, depriving them of a full role in choosing the member of Congress who will represent them.
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