Missouri Asked the U.S. Supreme Court to Restore Its Republican House Map Days Before the Ballot Deadline

Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to let it use a Republican-drawn congressional map in November, one day after the state's own high court unanimously ruled that the map cannot be used until voters weigh in on it directly.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the districts the legislature drew in 2025 must be put to a statewide referendum before they take effect, and that the 2022 post-census map governs the Nov. 3 general election. Judge Ginger K. Gooch issued the order restraining state officials from implementing the new lines. It landed days before Missouri's Sept. 8 deadline for locking in ballots.

The map was drawn at President Donald Trump's request as part of a national mid-decade redistricting push, and it had one clear target. Missouri's 5th District, held since 2005 by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, was stretched from Troost Avenue in Kansas City — a street that functioned for decades as the city's racial dividing line — nearly 200 miles east to take in rural Osage and Maries counties. The redrawn seat would have favored Trump by more than 17 points and given Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the state's delegation. Cleaver has carried his current district with better than 60 percent in each of his last two races.

The referendum exists because a group called People Not Politicians Missouri collected more than 305,000 signatures to force one, and because the court rejected Secretary of State Denny Hoskins's attempt to keep the question off the ballot.

"Despite the cynical and deeply shameful attempt to silence many of our neighbors, the people fought back and won," Cleaver said after the ruling.

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway called the decision "unprecedented" and said it had created a "full-fledged constitutional crisis," then filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to put the state ruling on hold. Trump wrote that the decision was "horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional."

The complication is that the August primary was already run under the new map. State Sen. Rick Brattin, whom Trump endorsed, won the Republican nomination in the redrawn 5th and now finds himself the nominee in a district that no longer exists. Brattin has called the restored 5th "practically unwinnable" and his campaign said it would file a separate federal lawsuit. The Republican National Committee said it was weighing its own options.

Missouri is the second front in a redistricting fight that has run in both directions this year. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared Alabama to use a Republican-drawn map that a lower court had called racially discriminatory, and Maryland Democrats called a special session in August to rewrite their own rules. Missouri is the first case in which a state's highest court has taken a Trump-backed map off the board outright, and with ballots being printed this week, the justices have very little runway to do anything about it.