{"id":888574,"date":"2026-09-09T00:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/888574\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T00:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:34:10","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-missouris-request-to-use-congressional-map-with-extra-gop-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/888574\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court rejects Missouri\u2019s request to use congressional map with extra GOP seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Missouri\u2019s request to use a congressional map<\/a> for the November midterm election that would have given Republicans a chance to flip a seat, a rare setback for the GOP\u2019s effort to keep control of the House next year by eking out an advantage from its political boundaries.\n <\/p>\n

\n The decision was issued by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency cases rising from parts of the Midwest. Kavanaugh did not refer the case to the full court, a signal that he didn\u2019t think the emergency appeal was significant enough to do so. He also did not explain his reasoning, and there were no dissents.\n <\/p>\n

\n Minutes after Kavanaugh issued his order, a federal trial court in Missouri handed down a separate ruling that bars the state from moving forward with any map other than the contested one that benefits the GOP.\n <\/p>\n

\n That order took note of Kavanaugh\u2019s decision, but it said that the plaintiffs in the separate case \u2014 led by Republican Rep. Bob Onder \u2014 had sufficiently argued that switching the maps between the primary and the general could represent an equal protection problem.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cUsing a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of Missouri\u2019s congressional elections, calling into question the candidacy of those nominated in the primaries and the votes of those who voted in the primaries,\u201d wrote US District Judge Stephen Clark, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump. \u201cWidespread voter confusion would inevitably follow.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said that the state was \u201cprepared to follow and comply\u201d the newer, lower court decision.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe maintain that changing the congressional map in between the primary and general elections is simply not feasible and profoundly unjust to Missouri voters,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling was the first of several quick-turn election cases the court is expected to decide in the coming days just weeks before the midterms. The justices are mulling a far more significant case dealing with President Donald Trump\u2019s effort to change how mail ballots are sent to voters<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n And earlier Tuesday, the Trump administration asked the high court<\/a> to reinstate a controversial citizenship records system his administration has sought to wield for sweeping reviews of state voter rolls.\n <\/p>\n

\n Missouri moved to the 7-1 Republican map under pressure from Trump, who has inspired an unusual mid-decade redistricting war in Republican and Democratic states. The Supreme Court\u2019s decision will likely mean that the state will have to use an earlier version of the map.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cToday the law won,\u201d said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, the group that challenged Missouri\u2019s map. \u201cThe Missouri constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n If Missouri\u2019s map is ultimately blocked for this year, Republicans would gain a net of nine seats<\/a> in the US House of Representatives because of those redistricting efforts in other states.\n <\/p>\n

\n Missouri\u2019s new map, which was enacted last year, was used in the state\u2019s primary election in August. But the state\u2019s highest court ruled last week that officials in Missouri wrongly dismissed a petition with more than 300,000 signatures to let the state\u2019s voters decide on the map via a referendum before it took effect.\n <\/p>\n

\n The map targeted the 5th Congressional District, held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, by breaking up its Kansas City base and stretching it into rural and Republican-leaning parts of the state.\n <\/p>\n

\n Missouri officials had raced up to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the state court decision would create a \u201cfederal-election-administration disaster\u201d and \u201cunprecedented chaos.\u201d Organizers of the referendum who sued over the use of the map countered that if there was an election emergency it was Missouri\u2019s own making.\n <\/p>\n

\n Opponents of the map had submitted their petition for a referendum late last year, but state officials waited until August 4, the last possible date, which happened to be the day of the state\u2019s primary, to declare that the state constitution\u2019s right for voters to weigh in on legislation doesn\u2019t apply to redistricting measures. The state supreme court rejected that interpretation.\n <\/p>\n

\n The 6-3 conservative US Supreme Court has played a significant role in shaping the outcome of this year\u2019s midterms. The court\u2019s landmark decision earlier this year gutting a significant part of the Voting Rights Act led to new redistricting in several Republican states in the South. Meanwhile, the court allowed Texas<\/a> to use a Republican-friendly map and permitted California<\/a> to use a map that benefits Democrats.\n <\/p>\n

\n This story has been updated with additional details.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Missouri\u2019s request to use a congressional map for the November midterm election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-888574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}