The two proposals denied a spot on the Nov. 3 ballot by Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins have the required signatures, data Hoskins has provided online shows.
Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green will hold a trial Tuesday afternoon on whether the proposal limiting legislative changes to measures passed by initiative will be on the ballot as Amendment 6. On Wednesday morning, a trial will be held on whether Missourians will vote on a referendum on congressional redistricting that would be listed as Proposition A if it is on the ballot.
When he denied both a spot on the ballot, Hoskins refused to say whether either had the signatures necessary to make the ballot. He was not allowing them on the ballot because they violate the state constitution’s limits on petitions seeking to place questions on the ballot.
A court filing from Hoksins’ attorneys in the Amendment 6 case is the first time he has admitted the proposal would qualify for the ballot if he had not found other reasons to block it.
Amendment 6 needed signatures equal to 8% of the registered voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts.
“The secretary admits the referendum petition was signed by at least 8% of voters in two-thirds of Missouri’s congressional districts,” Hoskins’ answer to the Amendment 6 lawsuit states. “The secretary denies that any of these signatures are relevant because the initiative petition is itself unconstitutional.”
In a news release, Benjamin Singer, co-founder of Respect MO Voters, the organization advocating for the proposed amendment, said the signature verification results show Hoskins is blocking the initiative because he opposes it.
“The secretary of state is responsible for reviewing signatures to certify a petition so the people of Missouri can be heard,” Singer said. “Politicians cannot simply disregard our century-old constitutional freedom to petition.”
The referendum petition needed signatures equal to 5% of the voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts. The political action committee that circulated the petitions, People Not Politicians, turned in 305,000 signatures in December and tracked the signature verification process.
Late Monday, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled that almost 103,000 signatures, gathered before Oct. 14, were invalid. That decision upheld a determination by Hoskins that the petition could not be circulated until he had approved the form.
None of those signatures were included in the batch checked by local election authorities and the campaign’s tracking showed the petition had the necessary signatures without them.
Amendment 6 issues
Amendment 6, if passed, would put heavy restrictions on the ability of lawmakers to alter state laws and constitutional amendments proposed by initiative and approved by voters. Any changes would have to obtain 80% support in the General Assembly and be ratified in a statewide vote.
Currently, there are no restrictions on lawmakers altering or repealing laws passed by initiative. A majority of lawmakers in both chambers can propose changes in constitutional amendments but those changes must also pass statewide.
That happened in 2020, when voters approved changes to the terms of a legislative redistricting proposal passed by initiative in 2018. Amendment 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot seeks to overturn the abortion rights measure approved in 2024.
Voters handed Republicans seeking to restrain the initiative process an historic defeat on Aug. 4. Amendment 4 received support from only 19.7% of voters, the seventh-worst defeat of any constitutional amendment proposed since 1910.
Amendment 4 would have required a majority vote in every congressional district to pass constitutional amendments by initiative.
“The Amendment 4 outcome reaffirms what we already know – Missouri voters are determined to protect their constitutional right to petition and have their voices heard,” Singer said in the news release.
The issues for Green this week, attorney Chuck Hatfield said in an interview Monday, is whether Hoskins was correct when he said Amendment 6 unconstitutionally includes more than one subject and whether he was within his authority to deny it a spot on the ballot.
Hoskins does have a limited authority to decide if the initiative meets the single-subject requirement, but Hatfield said he will argue Hoskins is wrong.
Hoskins “says that (Amendment 6) violates the single subject rule. I think he’s saying it amends multiple articles,” Hatfield said. “It’s not completely clear to me, but we’re prepared to defend it on that basis.”
In his pre-trial brief, Hatfield wrote that there is nothing in Amendment 6 that is unrelated. Other cases have shown that the single subject rule does not mean a proposal can do only one small thing, he wrote.
“The same logic applies here: every section of the Petition serves a single purpose—protecting citizen law-making power.
In his answer, Hoskins also raises a potential federal constitutional issue. The Missouri Constitution’s initiative power, the answer states, violates the federal constitution’s guarantee that every state has “a republican form of government.”
Hatfield said that is the first time he has seen a Missouri attorney general’s office filing that argues that a portion of the Missouri Constitution violates the federal constitution. It is, he said, an irrelevant point.
“That is what the courts call a nonjusticiable political question,” he said.
And it is what Hoskins’ answer says about the challenge to his disqualification of Amendment 6 from the November ballot.
The lawsuit “raises nonjusticiable questions that this court has no jurisdiction to address,” the filing states.
Referendum questions
Proposition A, if passed, would scuttle the gerrymandered congressional redistricting plan forced through by Republicans in a 2025 special session.
Hoskins denied the referendum a spot on the ballot because he said it is an improper use of the MIssouri Constitution’s provisions subjecting “any act of the general assembly” to a statewide vote if sufficient signatures are gathered in the allowed time.
The issues for Green — and the subsequent appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court — are far more complex than the ones involved in Amendment 6.
If the courts reverse Hoskins and a referendum occurs, the following questions must be answered:
- What district boundaries will be used for the November election?
- Are the nominees selected in the Aug. 4 primary the legal nominees if the districts revert to the previous map? The boundaries of six of Missouri’s eight districts changed in the map passed in 2025.
- What are the limits of the secretary of state’s power to interpret the state and federal constitutions to determine if a ballot measure is legal?
To convince the courts to uphold Hoskins, the state will argue that a redistricting law is a special kind of law that is unlike most new enactments.
The most recent referendum, on right to work, asked voters to decide whether a law establishing policies for unionized workplaces would take effect. Like most laws, it was a change in state policy that had a specific effective date.
A law establishing a congressional map commits candidates and political parties to major expenses targeting a specific geographic area. Implementation takes place over the year of the first election held under the map.
There are two exceptions to the referendum power in Missouri’s Constitution. No referendum can be held on a law enacted in response to an emergency and no referendum can be held on an appropriation bill.
The section stating those exceptions does not need to include a specific ban on redistricting laws, said Lou Capozzi, solicitor general, in an interview with The Independent. The U.S. Constitution gives power to redistrict to legislatures and the people cannot assume that authority without a specific allowance, he said.
“Silence is not good enough,” Capozzi said. “You have to be sure that Missourians actually made the conscious choice to transfer the redistricting power from the General Assembly to depart from the rules set by the U.S. Constitution.”
The silence on redistricting will be interpreted by the courts to mean a referendum is allowed, said Hatfield, who also represents People Not Politicians.
A referendum on a redistricting plan was held in 1922. When voters rejected the plan drawn by lawmakers, Missouri retained the previously used map and did not redistrict again until 1933.
The precedent of a 1922 referendum should be enough, Hatfield said.
And the way Missouri courts read the law also favors the referendum, he said.
With the example of a long period without redistricting in mind, the state Constitutional Convention that met in 1944 inserted language requiring that lawmakers produce a congressional plan after every census.
And with the example of the referendum in 1922, Hatfield said, the drafters could have included a ban on redistricting referenda but chose not to.
“They clearly could have restricted it, but instead (the constitution) says ‘any act’ of the General Assembly,” Hatfield said.
If the courts agree with People Not Politicians, the questions about the election come next.
The state will argue that court precedent, both at the federal and state level, mean that the election should be conducted in the districts used in the primary. It is too late to change.
The federal principle was established in a 2006 case from Arizona where the U.S. Supreme Court found that an injunction blocking use of a voter ID law came too close to the election. The Missouri principle was established in a 1970 case where the Missouri Supreme Court found that it was too late to change the board district map for a Kansas City junior college after the boundaries were found to violate rules for equal population because candidates had already filed.
Now that the primary has been held, Capozzi said, the general election must use the same districts. That’s what happened in 1970 and he expects it to happen again, he said.
“The Missouri Supreme Court said, ‘okay, yeah, that map is illegal, but you still have to use it for the next election because candidate filing is almost over, and it’s too late to make a change’,” Capozzi said.
The 1970 decision is useless as precedent, Hatfield said.
Congressional elections are different because no candidate is required to live in the boundaries of the district they represent, he said. The political parties are free to use the candidates nominated Aug. 3, he said.
No one has filed a lawsuit to nullify the primary results and it is not a question in the lawsuit that will be tried Wednesday.
The counter to the argument that it is too late to change anything is that Hoskins is the reason for the delay, Hatfield said.
“He caused this crisis on purpose,” Hatfield said. “The whole strategy from the beginning has been where we are right now: delay, delay, delay, and then tell the court, ‘Oh, we delayed so long, you can’t do anything about it.’”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
