Missouri Republicans filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday night asking the justices to restore a congressional map that the state’s own Supreme Court had unanimously blocked just 24 hours earlier — maps designed to eliminate Kansas City’s majority-Black congressional district and flip Missouri’s delegation from six Republicans and two Democrats to seven-to-one.
The showdown arrived at the high court with a holiday weekend deadline: Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency applications from the region, gave opponents of the map until noon on Labor Day to respond.
The new congressional boundaries were drawn last fall at President Trump’s urging as part of a mid-decade redistricting effort the Associated Press has traced across more than a dozen states. They reconfigured the Kansas City-based seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri’s only Black congressman, putting that seat at risk. Missouri’s Republican-drawn map was meant to give the party an additional House seat before the midterms, tightening the party’s grip on a thin majority.
Citizens who opposed the map used a tool embedded in Missouri’s constitution: the “citizen veto” provision, which lets residents block legislation from taking effect by gathering enough signatures to force a referendum. They submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures to put the map to a public vote. But Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition on the day of the August primary, asserting that congressional redistricting is not subject to the provision.
On Thursday, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Hoskins, ordered the referendum placed on the November ballot, and declared that maps drawn after the 2020 census must govern the general election — effectively reinstating the districts in use since 2022.
Republicans responded on two tracks. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway asked the Supreme Court to halt the state court’s decision immediately. “No court in American history has ever given such an extraordinary remedy,” Hanaway’s office wrote in the appeal. A separate federal lawsuit, filed Friday by Rep. Bob Onder and two voters, asked a district court for a restraining order reinstating the gerrymandered map, according to Democracy Docket, a voting-rights litigation organization founded by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias.
Central to both filings was the “Purcell principle,” a 2006 Supreme Court precedent that discourages courts from altering election rules close to an election. Missouri Solicitor General Louis Capozzi leaned on the case heavily in his Supreme Court brief — while acknowledging the Purcell principle has not previously been applied by the high court to block a state court’s ruling, only federal court decisions. State law sets a Tuesday deadline for changes to the November ballot, adding urgency to the request.
Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, which organized the petition drive, rejected the framing. “Anyone with a basic understanding of civics knows the legislature, which in Missouri includes the people via the referendum, is who makes law, not the judiciary,” he said.
NPR senior contributor Ron Elving noted Friday that Trump’s redistricting push has spread through states “where they had a friendly governor and legislature,” and that despite the setback in Missouri, Republican gerrymanders were still expected to benefit the party “on balance” heading into November — unless broader electoral trends overwhelm the redrawn lines.
The Missouri case echoes an earlier redistricting dispute in Virginia, where the Supreme Court declined to intervene when the state Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved congressional map — a signal, redistricting observers said at the time, that the justices were reluctant to override state court rulings on congressional maps. Whether that pattern holds with Missouri’s case — and a congressional majority potentially in play — may be known before the Tuesday filing deadline passes.
The midterm elections are scheduled for November 3.