The legal drama over Missouri’s congressional districts reached the Supreme Court for a third time on Tuesday night, setting up the justices to deliver the final word on which map the state will use in the midterms.
Opponents of a redrawn map asked the high court to once again block an order from a lower court judge that would require the state to use a map Republicans drew that targeted a Democratic-held seat.
The Supreme Court asked for a response from Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and the two Republican candidates by 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Election law experts expect the justices will once again rule in a way that requires the state to use a map from 2022 instead, as they did in the two previous times they were asked to weigh in earlier this month.
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A federal appeals court on Monday gave new life into the party’s push for the more GOP-friendly map, ruling that the new map should be used unless the Supreme Court steps in within a week.
In a filing to the high court, People Not Politicians, the advocacy group opposed to redistricting, argue that the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling violated the Supreme Court’s prior order.
The group also said that the 8th Circuit lacked the jurisdiction to handle the case in the first place and that Missouri election officials have already begun using the 2022 map. It asked the court to tell the state to use the 2022 maps in the general election.
The lawyers for People Not Politicians wrote that the 8th Circuit ordered the district court to issue a new injunction to use the new maps even though the Supreme Court stayed the first order.
“This Court’s stays are not invitations for a lower court to repackage the same relief and try again,” the lawyers for group wrote.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who focuses on election law, told The Washington Sun that he expects the Supreme Court to decide the same way it did earlier, noting that “this one is incredibly easy.”
Levitt pointed out that when the Supreme Court last paved the way for the state to use the 2022 map on Sept. 10, there were no public dissents. For Levitt, all of the reasons the court ruled as it did that time have only gotten stronger.
“Nothing has changed in Missouri’s favor,” Levitt said. “In addition to that, several things got notably worse for the state. Voting has started in the state. Ballots are out. So if the objection was ‘Well the timing was just too tight’ back then, it has gotten well past too tight right now.”
Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor, wrote that he had no doubt that the challengers to the new map would ask the Supreme Court to step in. “And I have very little doubt that the Supreme Court — yes, even this Supreme Court — will grant it,” he wrote.
Vladeck also pointed out that “if there had been any appetite in the Supreme Court for these kinds of shenanigans” it would have shown up in the Sept. 10 ruling, yet there were no public dissents.
“That suggests that no justice was publicly willing to upend Missouri’s congressional districts at this late hour—or to let a lower federal court override the Missouri Supreme Court’s construction of its own state law,” Vladeck wrote.
Missouri has been entangled in a legal back-and-forth over what the congressional district lines will look like since Republicans ushered a new map through the state legislature last September. Republicans drew out Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s 5th District seat, splitting Kansas City into three congressional districts and giving them a likely 7-1 map.
The state’s GOP was one of the first to redraw their congressional map at the request of President Donald Trump, who pushed for Republicans to make their U.S. House districts more favorable to the party.
Missouri voters used the 2025 redrawn map in the states’ August primary election.
The state began in-person absentee voting on Tuesday. Ballots began going out to out of state eligible voters on Friday.
Those ballots were sent using the 2022 maps, which are in use as the court action is pending.
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