Federal courts conflict on GOP effort to revive gerrymandered Missouri congressional map

Minutes after Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected an emergency bid to block a state Supreme Court ruling, a St. Louis federal judge ordered Missouri to use the 2025 districts

A federal judge in St. Louis on Tuesday ordered Missouri to use the gerrymandered congressional map drawn during a 2025 special session, giving a direction to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and other election officials that conflicts with an order issued last week by the Missouri Supreme Court.

Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued a temporary restraining order, effective for 14 days, blocking Hoskins from using any congressional map other than the one drawn during the 2025 special session. The order came just moments after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected Missouri Republican officials’ last-chance appeal to salvage the congressional district map favoring the GOP

Had Clark not acted, Kavanaugh’s denial would have left the state court order in place and Missouri on course to use the 2022 map for the November election.

The dueling orders created immediate confusion, with Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issuing a news release saying the state would comply with Clark’s order. Attorneys for People Not Politicians, the political action committee that forced a referendum on the 2025 map, said the conflicting orders could leave election officials unsure which one they must follow.

The local election authorities have a valid order from the Missouri Supreme Court telling them to use one map, said Chuck Hatfield, attorney for People Not Politicians. They also, he said, have a valid order from Clark telling them not use any map except the one the Missouri court said they should not use.

“I think they’re they’re probably not sure what map they should use, and they need to talk to their lawyers about that,” Hatfield said.

Abha Khanna, the Seattle attorney who was People Not Politicians’ lead lawyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, said Clark’s order “is something that we will deal with to figure out on appeal.”

A referendum on the 2025 redistricting plan will be on the Nov. 3 ballot as Proposition A.

The 2025 map was drawn with the goal of making seven of Missouri’s eight congressional districts favorable to Republicans, principally by reshaping the Kansas City-based 5th District held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The map used in 2022 and 2024 produced a delegation of six Republicans and two Democrats.

Clark issued his decision in a lawsuit filed Friday by U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, state Sen. Rick Brattin and two voters.

Onder is the Republican nominee in the 3rd District, seeking a second term in a district drawn more to his favor in the 2025 redistricting plan. Brattin is the Republican nominee in the 5th District, where the district was designed to generate a GOP victory that ousts veteran Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City.

“Plaintiffs face irreparable harm absent a (a temporary restraining order) because many Missouri voters would have to cast their general-election votes for candidates whom they had no role in nominating,” wrote Clark, who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by President Donald Trump. “Candidates who had no choice but to campaign and raise money in the (2025) districts that Missouri’s highest election authority presented to them, have spent their funds and campaign efforts in districts that would no longer exist.”

Clark also ruled that the public interest dictates that the map used in the primary be the map used for the general election.

“Disenfranchising voters across the state and denying them their constitutional right to have their primary votes counted significantly harm the public interest,” he wrote.

The center of both Clark’s ruling and the appeal to Kavanaugh is the Missouri Supreme Court decision that enjoined Hoskins from using the gerrymandered congressional map drawn.

Kavanaugh did not elaborate on his decision.

In turning down the emergency application for a stay, Kavanaugh created no precedent on the issues raised by the state. But the decision does show that he did not find enough convincing argument that the state would likely prevail in a hearing by the full court or that the state would suffer “several irreparable harms” as claimed in the application.

People Not Politicians on Sunday had urged Kavanaugh to reject the state’s application and uphold both parts of the ruling from the state Supreme Court.

In the opening paragraphs of the filing, attorneys for People Not Politicians write that the only reason the case was at the nation’s highest court is the decisions to delay made by Hoskins during the signature verification process.

Hoskins “waited as long as possible to manufacture the present dispute” and held the congressional primary using the 2025 map, they wrote, “in the hopes of running out the clock on the judiciary’s tolerance for a last-minute reversion to the 2022 districts.”

Now, they wrote, Hoskins wants “this court to deliver him the political victory to which he was never entitled under the Missouri Constitution. This court cannot and should not reward the secretary’s scheme to outsmart Missouri voters, Missouri law, and the Missouri Supreme Court by granting applicants the extraordinary relief they seek.”

A key point made by Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi in the state’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was that the mechanism for changing between districts is too time consuming and difficult to complete before ballots must be delivered starting Sept. 19.

County clerks, however, told the Missouri Supreme Court that switching voters to the map used in 2022 and 2024 is a relatively simple process. And the Jackson County Board of Elections told the Kansas City Star it would be ready to hold the election in the 2022 boundaries.

The redistricting story began in the summer of 2025, when Onder, of Lake St. Louis, got the ear of President Donald Trump to tell him that Missouri, like Texas, could provide additional GOP seats to bolster the party’s thin majority in Congress.

Since Missouri lost a seat after the 2010 census, it has sent six Republicans and two Democrats to the U.S. House each election.

Onder won his seat in 2022, the year he and other members of the state Senate’s conservative caucus were outmaneuvered as they tried to force a congressional map that would tilt the 5th District, based in Kansas City, to the GOP.

And, despite initial misgivings, Republicans got in line behind Trump. Gov. Mike Kehoe called a special session inflamed with partisanship, including a state Senate rule change that effectively silenced Democrats, that forced through what the GOP majority wouldn’t do in 2022.

The legal and political backlash that followed has not yet spent its full force. It began when People Not Politicians began circulating the referendum petition and intensified as it became clear there would be more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Legally, the battle has upended the consensus on the effect that filing a referendum petition has on legislation as well as delivered strong new precedent upholding the governor’s power to select subjects for a special session and the General Assembly’s power to redistrict at any time.

Politically, the climax will be written in November, when voters decide on both the referendum and the congressional candidates selected in the primary.

The flurry of filings over the weekend shows the intense national interest in the outcome of the Missouri case.

Republican attorneys general from Florida, Texas and 18 other states filed in support of Missouri, arguing it is not legal to change voting districts between the primary and the general election.

Meanwhile, in Texas, that state’s Supreme Court is deciding whether local voting districts can be changed after the primary to dilute voting strength of minorities.

The American Center for Law and Justice also sent a brief to the court urging it to rule for Hoskins.

On the other side, the Campaign Legal Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation joined forces to file a brief supporting People Not Politicians, as did the two Missouri voters who tried to get the 2025 map suspended while signatures were being checked.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh dismissed the final bid to hold the Nov. 3 election on lines designed to aid Republicans. The decision fixes the state ballot as the deadline for changes passes

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday rejected Missouri Republican officials’ last-chance appeal to salvage a congressional district map favoring the GOP, closing out the months-long legal saga over the referendum that will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot as Proposition A.

Kavanaugh’s ruling upholds a Missouri Supreme Court decision that enjoined Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using the gerrymandered congressional map drawn during a 2025 special session. The Missouri court ordered Hoskins to use the map in place in 2022 and 2024 because the bill creating the new map, now subject to a statewide vote, had never legally taken effect.

Other cases are pending over side issues. But Kavanaugh’s decision leaves the 2022 map in place as Tuesday’s ballot deadline arrives, dealing a potentially final blow to efforts to use the 2025 districts in November. While opponents of the plan lost most major decisions, they won the ones that counted most — whether a redistricting plan is subject to a referendum and whether a legal referendum petition stops enforcement of a new state law.

The ballot to be finalized at 5 p.m. Tuesday will have the referendum as Proposition A and a congressional election based on a map drawn in 2022 that is expected to return a delegation of six Republicans and two Democrats to Washington.

Kavanaugh did not elaborate on his decision.

In turning down the emergency application for a stay, Kavanaugh created no precedent on the issues raised by the state. But the decision does show that he did not find enough convincing argument that the state would likely prevail in a hearing by the full court or that the state would suffer “several irreparable harms” as claimed in the application.

People Not Politicians, the political action committee that submitted the referendum petition, on Sunday urged Kavanaugh to reject the state’s application and uphold both parts of Thursday’s ruling from the state Supreme Court.

People Not Politicians is represented at the Supreme Court by attorney Abha Khanna of Seattle, working with a six-member team that included the four Jefferson City attorneys, led by Chuck Hatfield, who represented People Not Politicians in the state court actions.

In the opening paragraphs of the filing, the attorneys write that the only reason the case is at the nation’s highest court now is the decisions to delay made by Hoskins during the signature verification process.

Hoskins “waited as long as possible to manufacture the present dispute” and held the congressional primary using the 2025 map, they wrote, “in the hopes of running out the clock on the judiciary’s tolerance for a last-minute reversion to the 2022 districts.”

Now, they wrote, Hoskins wants “this court to deliver him the political victory to which he was never entitled under the Missouri Constitution. This court cannot and should not reward the secretary’s scheme to outsmart Missouri voters, Missouri law, and the Missouri Supreme Court by granting applicants the extraordinary relief they seek.”

A key point made by Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi in the state’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was that the mechanism for changing between districts is too time consuming and difficult to complete before ballots must be delivered starting Sept. 19.

County clerks, however, told the Missouri Supreme Court that switching voters to the map used in 2022 and 2024 is a relatively simple process. And the Jackson County Board of Elections told the Kansas City Star it would be ready to hold the election in the 2022 boundaries.

There was no decision as of late Tuesday afternoon in a separate case filed in St. Louis federal court by U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, state Sen. Rick Brattin and two voters.