Supreme Court Blocks Missouri’s Messy, Trump-Backed Gerrymandering Fight

On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in Missouri’s controversial redistricting battle, backing the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision that the state could not use a congressional map drafted by the state’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe last year. 

The Supreme Court’s decision, which blocked a federal court order, is a blow to President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering push, which began last August when the president urged numerous red states across the country to modify their congressional district lines to favor Republicans in the midterm elections. Kehoe was happy to oblige, swiftly drawing up a new map that the Missouri Legislature approved during a special session in September 2025.

People Not Politicians, an anti-gerrymandering activist group, promptly challenged the new map, organizing a signature drive and petition. They collected over 300,000 signatures from across the state and deposited them with Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins in December. Under Missouri’s state constitution, the people “reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly.” So, once Hoskins’ office had verified the signatures, implementation of the new map would be paused until a statewide vote in November could determine the gerrymander’s fate. 

People Not Politicians simultaneously sued the state, claiming the Legislature lacked authority to draw up new maps between census years and that the new map violated mandates for district compactness. The Supreme Court of Missouri disagreed, ruling in March and in May that the new map was valid.

With the group’s lawsuits falling through, all hope for overturning the new map seemed to hinge on the referendum. However, months after the petition’s deposition, Hoskins had still not certified all the signatures. The Missouri Independent reported in May that Hoskins “said he intends to use the entire time available” up to the mandated deadline—the day of the primary election—before he would recognize the referendum as valid.

As foretold, Hoskins waited until the literal final hour before the deadline to conclude that “the referendum itself is null and void by virtue of the fact that it is unconstitutional.” 

People Not Politicians sued again, challenging Hoskins’ last-minute revelation about the referendum’s constitutionality. But by then the August primary had already been conducted using the gerrymandered district lines. 

After a swift appeals process, the Supreme Court of Missouri decided against Hoskins on September 3, writing (not without some obvious irritation) “the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise.” The old map, the court ruled, was to remain “in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”

The next day, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, acting on the behalf of Hoskins, appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking for a stay on the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision, a move that former Missouri Solicitor General Jim Layton called “unprecedented.” 

In his new appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Hoskins said that the state Supreme Court could not throw out the new map because a federal election had already been conducted using it and returning to the old map would confuse voters and violate federal law.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Hoskins’ request for a stay on Tuesday, effectively echoing the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision. Just minutes after the Court’s denial on Tuesday, Trump-appointed federal judge Stephen Clark issued a restraining order in a different lawsuit, which blocked Missouri from “using, publishing, distributing, or mandating the use of any congressional district map other than the [new] map for the November [election].”

Choosing the court order he agreed with, Hoskins contacted Missouri election officials Tuesday night endorsing the use of the new map. For this, Hoskins was summoned before the Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday to justify that his actions were not in contempt of the court’s order. 

Just minutes before the contempt hearing began in Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court paused Clark’s restraining order while litigation in the appeals court continued. The Missouri Supreme Court found that Hoskins’ past behavior was in contempt of its order, but that his culpability would be purged if he stopped using the new map. Logistical challenges remain, but as of Thursday afternoon, Hoskins’s office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map,” The New York Times reports. 

Missouri’s gerrymander is not an isolated case, nor is it a one-sided issue. Over the past two years, nine states have drafted gerrymandered congressional maps. Eight of those states have Republican-controlled legislatures. The ninth is California, which, at the initiation of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, approved a statewide gerrymander by referendum.

While Trump is responsible for much of these undertakings, “the broader trend [of gerrymandering] predates Trump, and coincides with a general decay of civic norms and customs and a heightening of politics as a venture in trying to crush the enemy,” Walter Olson, a legal scholar at the Cato Institute, tells Reason.

This push “to crush the enemy” might reward power-hungry politicians hoping to benefit their party, but the losers in all of this are the voters, who have their voice diluted with each further gerrymander. Missouri’s redistricting scheme may have been foiled this year, but eight other states will be using newly gerrymandered maps this November.