The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked an attempt to implement a President Donald Trump-backed congressional map aimed at netting Republicans another seat in the U.S. House.
This is the third time the high court has gotten involved to prevent congressional lines drawn to oust Congressman Emanuel Cleaver from going into effect. And, barring more legal challenges, the Supreme Court's action could shut the door this year on efforts to use the map designed to defeat the Kansas City Democrat.
"The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri," the per curium decision wrote. "And the District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri."
The decision comes after weeks of contradictory rulings in state courts and federal courts.
The Republican-controlled Missouri legislature passed the new map last year at the behest of Trump as part of a nationwide strategy to draw more GOP-leaning seats to prevent Democrats from winning control of the U.S. House in the November elections. Currently, Republicans just hold just a slim majority.
But opponents of the Missouri map successfully gathered signatures to place it up for a vote.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that meant the 2025 map never took effect and was never law – even though it had been used in the Aug. 4 primaries. The court blamed the state's Republican secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, for sticking with the GOP map even though it wasn't approved by voters.
Republicans appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined on Sept. 10 to intervene in the state court's ruling.
Simultaneously with that process, though, Republicans sued in federal court and won backing for the GOP map from a federal judge and then, last week, a federal appeals court. That sent the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court for Friday's ruling.
In the flurry of legal twists and turns, Republicans argued that their map should be used because it was used in the primary in which more than a million people voted. Opponents of the redistricting argued the map required the approval of voters and should never have been used. They blamed Republican officials for dragging out the process and trying to force through the new map.
The group behind the redistricting referendum, People Not Politicians, appealed the 8th Circuit's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the appeals court overstepped its bounds by ordering Judge Stephen Clark to issue a permanent injunction. People Not Politicians attorney Abha Khanna wrote in her emergency appeal that commanding Missouri to use the 2025 map when election officials were told to use the 2022 map would cause chaos, since early voting and military voting are already underway.
The U.S. Supreme Court cited a brief from an association of county clerks and election authorities that the election was already underway — and that putting the 2025 back in place would be disruptive.
"The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed. Absentee voting has already begun, as has military and overseas voting," the court wrote. "According to local election officials in Missouri: 'At this point, it is practically impossible to revert to the' 2025 'map.'"
With the 8th Circuit's decision blocked, the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling barring the use of the 2025 map is the only judicial order in effect. That means Cleaver is likely to win reelection, since the 2022 map contains a safe Democratic seat for the veteran congressman.
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