A Missouri judge handed Republicans a win in Missouri’s ongoing redistricting battle, as the state’s GOP pushes for their redrawn maps to be used in this year’s midterm elections.
In a ruling Wednesday, Cole County Judge Daniel Green upheld Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ decision earlier this month that blocked a referendum seeking to overturn the state’s new congressional maps. The lines had been redrawn to more heavily favor Republicans.
Missouri Republicans were one of the first delegations to take up President Donald Trump’s call last summer to redraw congressional maps in the hopes that Republicans could pad their numbers in this year’s midterm elections and hold control of the House of Representatives.
The party quickly pushed new Trump-backed maps through the state legislature, targeting long-serving Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s seat by splitting up parts of Kansas City.
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Over 30,000 Missouri residents signed a petition seeking to force a statewide vote on the gerrymander, according to the organizing group, which handed in the signatures to Hoskins in December. In Missouri, a petition with enough signatures triggers a referendum on the law in question.
On Aug. 4, Hoskins, a Republican, rejected the petition that would have triggered a statewide vote on the new maps, calling the challenge itself unconstitutional.
In the decision issued Wednesday, Green said that because the Missouri Constitution doesn’t explicitly allow or instruct a referendum on redistricting, the referendum is not valid.
“Missouri has never — by constitutional provision, by statute, or by practice — subjected congressional redistricting to the referendum,” Green wrote. “At every turn where the question might have been addressed, Missouri’s framers and legislators either remained silent or affirmatively rejected referenda on redistricting.”
Green also wrote that he believed federal law would prohibit any changes to the maps so close to the general election, in part because the new maps were already used in the state’s primaries.
“An order changing the congressional map would thus create two classes of voters — those who had the opportunity to select their general election candidate and those who did not — in direct violation of the Equal Protection Clause,” Green wrote, stating that the court would not be making any changes to the new maps.
People Not Politicians, the group leading the lawsuit against the maps, vowed to fight the ruling in the state’s Supreme Court.
“The most important thing that happened today is that there was a ruling,” Richard von Glahn, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “The State has tried to slow down the judicial process for months and now that we are out of Cole County, the real decision will be made. Our case now moves forward.”
Ballots for Missouri’s general election must be finalized by Sept. 8. Chief Justice Brent Powell ordered an expedited review of the case, with oral arguments set for Sept. 2.
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