Supreme Court blocks GOP’s Missouri gerrymander again

What happened

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Missouri Republicans from using a 2025 congressional map designed to net the GOP one House seat. Justice Brett Kavanaugh earlier this week rejected a request from state officials to overrule a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the 2025 map was void until approved by voters, and Thursday, the full court paused a subsequent order from U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark requiring Missouri to use only that new gerrymander.

Who said what

The Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Clark, issued “without any noted dissent,” was an apparent “signal that federal courts should stay out of the dispute,” Politico said. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) said in a statement after the ruling that his office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map.” The Missouri Supreme Court also held Hoskins in civil contempt for ordering local officials to use the 2025 map after Clark’s ruling. But Hoskins “purged himself of said contempt” with his reversal, the justices said.

The rulings “marked a defining moment in a pitched legal battle that has lasted nearly a year,” The Associated Press said. But they also set up an “extremely rare situation” where Missouri is “poised to hold its November election” with “different U.S. House districts than were used in the August primary.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

What next?

It “seems likeliest” that Missouri’s primary winners will run in their “same-numbered districts on the old map,” The New York Times said. “If no additional courts” add to the “dizzying volley” of rulings, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) is “favored to retain a Kansas City-area House seat that Republicans had hoped to flip.”