More than 1.4 million Missouri residents could be placed in different congressional districts depending on which map the U.S. Supreme Court allows for November, a dispute that returned to the justices Wednesday after absentee voting had already begun. The court’s docket shows responses from Republican candidates, Missouri officials and opposing groups were filed September 23, putting the case on an emergency timetable less than six weeks before the midterm election.
The immediate question is whether Missouri should use districts enacted by its Republican-led legislature in 2025, which were used for the August primary, or the 2022 map that state courts say remains legally in force. The newer map would dismantle much of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-based district and could help Republicans win seven of the state’s eight U.S. House seats. The outcome therefore carries consequences beyond Missouri as Republicans defend a narrow House majority.
The latest filing asks the Supreme Court to preserve the 2022 map and block an Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that ordered Missouri to return to the 2025 lines. The challengers’ application says ballots using the older districts have been printed and mailed, overseas ballots went out by September 18 and in-person absentee voting started September 22. Missouri officials and Republican candidates answer that keeping the older map would prevent roughly one in four residents from voting in the same district used to select their party nominees.
Two Maps and One Election
Missouri lawmakers passed House Bill 1 in September 2025 after President Donald Trump urged Republican-controlled states to redraw districts before the 2026 midterms. Opponents organized a referendum petition and submitted more than 300,000 signatures before the measure took effect. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until the August 4 primary to reject the petition, concluding that Missouri’s referendum power did not extend to congressional redistricting.
The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously reversed that decision on September 3. Its opinion held that the state constitution permits a referendum on redistricting legislation and that the 2025 map never became law because the valid petition suspended it. The court ordered Proposition A onto the November ballot and barred the state from using the new districts unless voters approve them.
The timing created an unusual split election. Candidates ran in an August primary under the 2025 lines, while the state began preparing the November election under the 2022 districts after the state-court ruling. The Supreme Court denied Missouri’s first request to pause that decision on September 8 and then, two days later, blocked a federal trial judge’s temporary order requiring use of the newer map. Neither emergency order explained the justices’ reasoning.
The Appeals Court Changes Course
On Monday, a three-judge Eighth Circuit panel ruled that using different maps for the primary and general election would violate the constitutional right to choose representatives. The panel’s opinion relied on estimates that 1,419,242 residents, or 23.1% of Missouri’s population, live in different districts under the two plans. It also said about 284,000 primary voters would receive general-election ballots for districts in which they did not help choose the nominees.
The judges directed the trial court to enter a permanent injunction requiring the 2025 map but delayed that order until September 28 so the Supreme Court could intervene. As Reuters reported, the appellate decision did not immediately replace the high court’s earlier stay, leaving election officials to continue with the older districts while the new application is pending.
Competing Claims of Voter Harm
Both sides describe the other map as disenfranchising voters, but they identify different harms. Republican candidates and Missouri officials argue that changing districts after the primary separates voters from nominees they had an opportunity to select. Their Wednesday response emphasizes that 57% of residents in the 5th District under the newer map would be placed elsewhere under the older lines.
People Not Politicians, the referendum sponsor, argues that the state created the mismatch by conducting the primary under a law whose status was unresolved and by delaying review of the signatures. It says federal courts cannot make effective a districting law that Missouri’s highest court found never took effect. Its application also points to practical limits: all 116 local election jurisdictions have prepared ballots under the 2022 map, some voters have already cast them, and replacing ballots would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Election administrators told the courts that changing districts after voting begins would be practically impossible. The Associated Press reported that ballots had already been sent to military and overseas voters, and that a voter who had returned an absentee ballot could not recast it if district lines changed. That operational record strengthens the argument against a late switch, though it does not resolve the federal constitutional issue identified by the appeals court.
A National Redistricting Test
The case reaches beyond Missouri because it sits at the intersection of state referendum rights, federal election protections and an escalating national campaign to redraw House districts between censuses. Both parties have pursued mid-decade maps where they control state government, but Missouri’s fight is distinctive: voters invoked a referendum, a state supreme court said the challenged map never took effect, and a federal appeals court concluded that reverting to the legally valid map would itself impair voting rights.
The Supreme Court can grant or deny the emergency stay without deciding every underlying claim. A stay would keep the 2022 districts in place for November; denying it could allow the Eighth Circuit’s permanent injunction to take effect after September 28, unless the justices issue different instructions. The central fact is no longer simply which map favors which party. Missouri has begun voting under one set of districts after nominating candidates under another, and the court must decide whether constitutional consistency or the practical limits of an election already underway carries greater weight.
