World News
Missouri's Supreme Court blocks the redrawn congressional map, then refuses a stay
By Staff Writer | 5 September 2026
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a petition forcing the 2025 map to a public vote was valid, barring the map from November's elections. On Friday it overruled the attorney general's motion for a stay pending an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court of Missouri held unanimously on Thursday 3 September that a referendum petition against the state's redrawn congressional map was valid, and that the Secretary of State had been wrong to reject it. The effect is that the map signed into law in September 2025, after a special session of the legislature, cannot be used in November's elections or in any future election unless Missouri voters approve it first. The referendum goes on the November ballot. Until then the state reverts to the districts drawn after the last census.
The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise.
The Supreme Court of Missouri, in its ruling of 3 September 2026
The petition was signed by nearly 300,000 residents. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected it as legally insufficient on 4 August, which was the day of the party primaries, and that rejection produced the litigation. The court sits seven judges, five of them appointed by Republican governors, and the decision was unanimous. The court had earlier held that the special legislative session which produced the map was itself lawful, so the ruling turns on the validity of the petition rather than on the map's contents.
The stay was refused the next day
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said she would appeal immediately to the United States Supreme Court, and applied first to the Missouri court for a stay of its injunction, or an alternative stay giving the federal court time to consider the case. On Friday 4 September Chief Justice Brent Powell signed an order refusing both.
Respondent's motion for a stay of injunction pending emergency appeal and application for stay to the Supreme Court of the United States overruled.
Brent Powell, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri
Hanaway described the Thursday ruling as a full-fledged constitutional crisis and put the historical objection in one line.
Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election.
Catherine Hanaway, Attorney General of Missouri
That is the substance of the state's case as well as its rhetoric. Missouri voters cast primary ballots in August under the 2025 map, and there is an unresolved question whether a general election may run on districts different from those used at the primary. Supporters of the petition answer that the timing was created by the Secretary of State's own decision to withhold certification until the day of the primary.
What it means on the ground
The change falls hardest on Missouri's Fifth District, held by Emanuel Cleaver, which takes in parts of Kansas City and was reshaped by the 2025 map into surrounding districts with large rural populations.
County clerks now have to move voters back. Boone County was split between the Third and Fifth districts for the August primary and will be split between the Third and Fourth in November. Party nominees chosen in August keep their districts.
It'll be about 40% of our voters that have moved to a different district that go back to their old district.
Brianna Lennon, Boone County Clerk
Lennon said on Friday that she and other clerks had raised in April and May the possibility of exactly this outcome if certification of the referendum petition waited until the 4 August deadline, and that reverting to the earlier districts would be straightforward administratively.
Ballots have to be printed and two months remain. The appeal to the federal court is now the only route left to the state, and it will be heard against an injunction that is already in force.