Supreme Court intervenes in Missouri elections case

The U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on Missouri’s use of congressional maps for the midterm elections, shocking experts by reversing two lower court rulings and siding with the state’s Supreme Court.

In an unsigned Sept. 10 order, the Supreme Court stayed a decision by District Chief Judge Stephen Clark that had allowed Missouri to conduct November’s midterm elections using congressional maps drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2025.

As a result of the high court’s intervention, Missouri will have to conduct the midterm elections under the 2022 maps that the legislature did away with, even though August’s primary elections were conducted using the 2025 maps.

Missouri’s Supreme Court halted the use of the 2025 maps in early September, in response to a petition brought by the Democrat-aligned People Not Politicians organization. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and restore the use of the 2025 maps. Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied the request.

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

In a separate case, U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., was joined by Republican congressional candidates and voters in filing a lawsuit in federal court to restore the 2025 maps. Clark’s Sept. 8 temporary restraining order (TRO) barred the Missouri Supreme Court from forcing the state to use the 2022 maps. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed Clark’s ruling.

When People Not Politicians appealed the decision higher, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the organization’s request for a stay, leaving the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling the highest order in effect.

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s stay, the Missouri Supreme Court had threatened to hold Hoskins in contempt of court for abiding by the federal district court’s order over the state Supreme Court’s and instructing state and local election officials to use the 2025 maps.

The Missouri Supreme Court handed down a judgment Sept. 10 of contempt of court against Hoskins but imposed no penalty, determining that he had purged the contempt by ordering election officials to use the 2022 maps after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.

>> Missouri Supreme Court’s election ruling triggers dueling federal responses <<

Don Palmer, a senior legal fellow for election integrity at the Heritage Foundation and a former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, told Zeale News that the U.S. Supreme Court’s stay was “disappointing.”

“It failed to simply affirm what the federal district court and Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals had clearly found troubling, that changing the political boundaries in the middle of a federal congressional primary and general election was unconstitutional,” he said.

“This troubling decision allows the legally adopted map of the Missouri legislature to be overturned by the potential adoption of a statewide referendum,” Palmer continued. “While the big picture has Republicans remaining +9 in the redistricting wars for 2026, this insane litigation in the ‘Show-Me State’ will burn for a bit because even the federal courts did not have the will or desire to stop the last-minute shenanigans of the Missouri Supreme Court.”

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, opined that the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention effectively allowed about 3% of Missouri’s population to override the actions of the legally elected legislature.

“On the merits, it is extremely problematic if a tiny percentage of voters in a state (3%) can get a free two-year pass on any map,” Blackman wrote. “I've seen many reports that the majority of the Missouri Supreme Court is appointed by a Republican Governor, but remember Missouri is the home of the Missouri plan.”

The Missouri Plan is a program whereby a “non-partisan” committee presents the governor with a list of candidates for vacant judicial positions. After appointment, the judge then stands for retention in the next general election.

“This is not a conservative court,” Blackman said. “Alas, state courts get to interpret their own constitutions.”