Missouri Supreme Court’s election ruling triggers dueling federal responses

After the Missouri Supreme Court last week barred the use of congressional district maps drawn by the legislature last year, two cases from separate plaintiffs yielded different decisions from two federal courts.

In one case, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, R-Mo., appealed the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh requested briefs from the parties involved in the case and declined on Sept. 8 to take up the case.

Notably, Kavanaugh made the decision himself and did not refer the case to the full court. The denial of relief therefore does not establish U.S. Supreme Court precedent, but it does not stay the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling.

In a separate case, U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., Republican congressional nominee Rick Brattin, and a pair of Missouri voters filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, similarly challenging the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling.

>> Missouri Supreme Court rejects congressional district maps mid-election <<

In that second case, District Chief Judge Stephen Clark issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) halting the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, reasoning that the 2025 maps were already used for primary elections and that the state could not suddenly revert to maps put in place in 2022 mid-election. His TRO was published just minutes after Kavanaugh denied relief in the first case.

Using congressional maps other than the 2025 maps “would disenfranchise primary-election voters and undermine the nominations of candidates chosen in the primaries,” Clark wrote in his TRO memorandum. “The primary ballots cannot simply be recounted under the 2022 districts, as the district boundaries and candidates would not be the same for all voters. And the harm could not be more imminent: under state law, the deadline for finalizing the ballot is today, September 8.”

Denny and other Missouri officials confirmed that they intend to abide by Clark’s ruling requiring the use of the 2025 maps rather than the Missouri Supreme Court’s demand that the maps be replaced mid-election cycle with the 2022 maps.

In a message to county clerks and local election authorities, Denny said that “the federal court’s ruling, based on federal law, takes precedence over the Missouri Supreme Court’s order, which is based on state law. This is in accordance with the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.”

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, R, likewise asserted that the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision is overruled by the federal court’s.

“Missouri is prepared to follow and comply with Chief Judge Clark's order that binds the state to using the Missouri FIRST map for the November General Election,” she said in a post on X. “We maintain that changing the congressional map in between the primary and general elections is simply not feasible and profoundly unjust to Missouri voters.”

To complicate matters, the Missouri Supreme Court subsequently threatened to hold Hoskins in contempt of court for honoring Clark’s ruling over the state court’s. Hoskins is required to respond and appear before the court by Sept. 10.

In an X post, Hoskins affirmed that he will not abide by the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, shifting much of the blame for the legal dispute to Richard von Glahn, the executive director of People Not Politicians, the left-wing organization which challenged the use of the new maps in August.

“Missouri is and always will be the place I call home. I will always fight to protect our common-sense Missouri values from a liberal Democrat Socialist and his out-of-state NYC sugar daddies,” Hoskins wrote.

“The Show Me State will not be run into the ground like the communists running NYC on my watch. I will continue to abide by Judge Clark’s federal temporary restraining order on a federal congressional election,” he concluded. “I look forward to my day in court.”