Conflicting rulings add chaos in Missouri election

What happened

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal from Missouri Republican officials to pause last week’s unanimous state Supreme Court ruling that a new congressional map is void and can’t be used in the upcoming midterm elections. But shortly after Kavanaugh’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark ruled in a separate case that Missouri can’t use any map other than the new one, designed to net Republicans one House seat as part of President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push.

Who said what

“Taken together, the dueling court orders left Missouri where it began,” The New York Times said, with “no agreement about which congressional map should be in effect in November and no immediate route to resolving that question.” Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said on X that the state is “prepared to follow and comply with” the ruling from Clark, a Trump appointee. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) on Tuesday night instructed local election officials to use the new map, which was also used in last month’s primaries at his direction.

What next?

People Not Politicians, the group fighting the GOP gerrymander, asked Clark to stay his ruling, appealed it to the U.S. 8th Circuit Court and asked the Missouri Supreme Court to hold Hoskins in contempt for violating its order to use the 2022 maps. Missouri must start sending out absentee ballots Sept. 19.

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