The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the state from continuing to use Republicans’ redrawn congressional map and allowed a November ballot referendum on the issue to move forward.
The ruling to block Republicans’ new map breaks from other redistricting cases this year in red states, where gerrymandering efforts have generally withstood more legal challenges than in Democratic ones.
“What we got today is not an easy accomplishment,” Richard von Glaghn, the executive director of nonprofit People Not Politicians, which sought a ballot referendum on the issue, said at a press conference shortly after the ruling. “It is a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court and it reaffirms what we have said all along. We have the right to do a referendum and a law cannot go into effect until the people decide.”
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway quickly said that she planned to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that the Thursday decision disenfranchised Missouri voters.
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The state’s Republicans were among the first to take up President Donald Trump’s national call to redraw congressional maps to gain more U.S. House seats before the midterms. Lawmakers passed a map that was expected to give Republicans a 7-1 House advantage by drawing out Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s seat in Kansas City, slicing the district he has represented for over 20 years into three parts.
While Missouri’s new map was used in the August primaries, the state must employ the old 6-2 map for the upcoming midterms, the court ruled.
“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise,” Judge Ginger K. Gooch wrote in the 14-page opinion. “HB 1 did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters. The congressional redistricting the General Assembly established in 2022 remains in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”
The state constitution allows voters to force a referendum on laws passed by the general assembly. Shortly after lawmakers passed a new map last fall, People Not Politicians promptly filed a petition with over 330,000 signatures, more than double the necessary amount, to Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins. On Aug. 4, Hoskins, a Republican, blocked the referendum effort, a decision a circuit judge later upheld.
Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Brent Powell later that month urged lower court judges to move quickly on the case, citing a state law that restricts changing the ballot after Sept. 8. The high court on Wednesday heard two cases filed by People Not Politicians.
As he left the U.S. Capitol on his way back to Kansas City to await the ruling, Cleaver told NOTUS that the redistricting effort led by Republicans in his state was them putting “political advantage over everything.”
“They wanted to cheat,” Cleaver said on Wednesday. “The polling data shows that the people in Missouri overwhelmingly oppose this — Black, White, brown, Republican, Democrat, independent. Nobody thinks that this is wholesome for the community, but they don’t care about that. The issue is, you know, the president wants the seats.”
Republicans have successfully redrawn their maps to make seats more favorable to their party in a slew of states, including multi-seat grabs in Florida and Texas. Democrats have had a much more difficult time, with only the California ballot proposition successfully withstanding legal challenges, while an effort to redistrict in Virginia and a push for potential 2028 redistricting in Maryland were both struck down by their state courts.
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