On a single Tuesday, two federal judges a few hours apart told Missouri to hold its congressional election under two different maps. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency requests from the Eighth Circuit, rejected the state's application to keep using the 2025 congressional map in a one-sentence order that gave no reason and was never referred to the full Supreme Court. Minutes later, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark in St. Louis issued a temporary restraining order in a separate lawsuit barring Missouri election officials from using any map other than the 2025 one. County clerks now hold both papers, and the papers disagree about everything that matters.
A map drawn in a hurry, challenged just as fast
The 2025 map, House Bill 1, was the product of a special session called by Governor Mike Kehoe after Representative Bob Onder, then a state senator, and President Trump pressed for a mid-decade redraw. Its central move was the fifth congressional district: the Kansas City-based seat held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver would be split apart and its pieces folded into neighboring Republican districts, turning an expected six-to-two Republican map into a seven-to-one one. A Senate rule change during the session, critics note, effectively silenced Democratic participation in the process.
The map's defenders answer that mid-decade redistricting is legal, that every line-drawing favors someone, and that Missouri's legislature was entitled to act. Its critics answer that the fifth district's carve-up is exactly the kind of move the state's referendum power exists to check. Both positions have been visible in this fight from the first week, and neither has moved.
People Not Politicians, a campaign committee led by Richard von Glahn, submitted more than 300,000 signatures in December 2025 to put HB 1 to a statewide vote. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition on August 4, 2026, the statutory deadline and the same day as the state's primary. The lawsuit came hours later. The primary itself was run under the new map, because the map was still the law on the books while the petition's fate was unresolved.
The state court settles it, unanimously
On September 3 the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the referendum was legal, sufficient, and timely, that the 2025 map never took effect, and that the 2022 lines would govern the November election unless voters approve HB 1, which now sits on the November ballot as Proposition A. The court permanently enjoined Hoskins from using the 2025 map. The ruling was a complete win for the petition's organizers and a complete loss for the state, and it left Missouri with the odd condition of having just held a primary in districts the state's highest court says never legally existed.
Washington declines, then St. Louis answers differently
The state went to Washington. In his emergency filing, Hoskins argued that a federal election administration disaster was unfolding, that the August primary had run under the 2025 districts, and that switching maps now would leave hundreds of thousands of voters to choose in November among candidates they had no role in nominating. His legal theory was the Elections Clause: the federal Constitution assigns the mechanics of congressional elections to state legislatures, not to petition signers.
The opponents' answer was procedural. Under Missouri law, von Glahn argued, the 2025 map never took effect, which meant the 2022 plan was the legal status quo and the state actually needed an injunction establishing authority to use HB 1, not merely a stay of the state court's ruling. Kavanaugh's denial, silent on reasoning and sent without referral to the full court, left the state court's injunction standing.
Hours later came Clark's order in a lawsuit filed the previous Friday by Onder, now a congressman, state Senator Rick Brattin, the Republican nominee in the redrawn fifth district, and two voters. It barred officials from "using, publishing, distributing, or mandating the use of any congressional map other than" the 2025 plan. Clark, a Trump appointee, reasoned that the August primary had run under the new districts and that switching now would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of the election, forcing voters to cast general-election ballots for candidates they had no role in nominating and discounting the primary votes they already cast.
The referendum side has its own account of that lawsuit. The plaintiffs, they point out, are Republicans fully aligned with Hoskins, and the secretary consented to the restraining order without opposition. Von Glahn's team has called the federal case collusive and feigned, a vehicle for getting a friendly order that the state court would never issue. Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who has dismissed the state court's ruling as a legal fiction, said the state will comply with Clark's order.
The primary is the trap
Whichever map governs in November, a class of voters loses something they have already exercised, and that is the engine of the whole crisis.
If the 2025 map stays, more than 300,000 people followed the constitutional procedure to challenge a law, won in their state's highest court, and still watch the map they successfully contested govern the election. Proposition A becomes a question about a map already in use, and the referendum's outcome is drained of consequence.
If the 2022 map returns, the primary's nominations happened in districts that no longer exist. November voters would pick among candidates they had no role in nominating, in boundaries nobody campaigned in. Clark's concern is real on its own terms, and it is shared by plenty of people who have no stake in the map's partisan design.
The trap was set before either court spoke. The primary ran under a map whose legality was the open question. The referendum organizers say that sequence was chosen: the secretary rejected the petition on the last possible day and the state then ran the primary on the contested map anyway, waiting as long as possible to manufacture the present dispute. The state says the calendar is statutory and the primary had to run on the law as it stood. Whichever account is right, the consequence is identical. A court can void a map. It cannot un-run a primary. Every remedy now charges the bill to one group of voters or the other, and the courts are being asked, eight weeks before the election, to decide which group pays.
Officials pick a side, and the vacuum shows
On Tuesday evening Hoskins emailed local election authorities a copy of Clark's order along with his ballot certification, telling them the federal order takes precedence over the state court's ruling. "This victory halts a full-on constitutional crisis," he said.
The Missouri Supreme Court answered with a show-cause order the same night. Chief Justice W. Brent Powell directed Hoskins to appear at a hearing Thursday morning and explain why his email was not an affirmative violation of the court's injunction, why that injunction is not still in full force after the Supreme Court's denial, and whether, if he will not comply, he should take no action on map matters until a higher court speaks. No other parties will be allowed to file.
Chuck Hatfield, the attorney for People Not Politicians, put the vacuum plainly: Clark's order "does not purport to overrule this court's injunction." One court says the 2025 map may not be used. The other says nothing else may be. Local election authorities, Hatfield notes, are probably not sure which map they should use, and nobody has yet told them.
Meanwhile the Eighth Circuit is the next stop. Von Glahn's team, led by Abha Khanna, filed an emergency brief there Tuesday night, and a ruling is pending. Ballots are scheduled to ship September 19. County clerks told the state court that switching maps is simple work, and Jackson County said it could use the 2022 boundaries. Twenty state attorneys general, including Florida's and Texas's, backed Hoskins; the Campaign Legal Center and the ACLU backed People Not Politicians. The dispute now has more parties than it has maps, and still no single answer about which map is the law.
Both sides' best case
The case for keeping the 2025 map, stated as its advocates state it: the primary has run, and hundreds of thousands of Missourians voted in it. Candidates campaigned, raised money, and won nominations in those districts. Redrawing the general election after the nominations voids what those voters did, and the state court's ruling, whatever its merits, landed after the machinery was in motion. The federal Constitution assigns election administration to state legislatures, not to petitions, and the voters' recourse is the ballot, not a court's after-the-fact rewrite of a completed primary.
The case for the 2022 map, stated as its advocates state it: the constitution reserves the referendum, and the secretary rejected 300,000-plus signatures on the last possible day and ran the primary on the contested map anyway. If that sequence stands, running out the clock works, and the next official who likes an unpopular map has a template. A map that never took effect cannot validly structure a primary, and treating it as if it did rewards the very sequence the referendum exists to stop.
This article takes no position on which map should govern. Both positions above are stated as their advocates would state them, and the litigation's unresolved claims remain allegations.
Whatever one believes about the 2025 map, both sides should want the same thing: a single answer before the ballots ship, because the cost of the vacuum falls on the clerks who must print the ballots and the voters who must trust them. The confusion is not a side effect of the dispute. It is the dispute, delivered to the people who run the election.
The question Missouri is answering for everyone
The House majority is six seats wide, 219 to 214, and the fifth district is one of roughly sixteen seats the national mid-decade redistricting push has reshaped. Texas and other states have their own fights in this cycle, and the Missouri case is the first to test, in real time, whether a state's referendum power or a federal court's reading of the Elections Clause settles a state's ballot. The primary cannot be re-run, the calendar made the legal question and the election question the same question too late to answer separately, and the state's own sequencing is what converted a lawsuit into a zero-sum election crisis. What Missouri's clerks need now is not another order but the same order twice.
Primary sources
- SCOTUSblog for the Kavanaugh denial, the docket number, and the parties' emergency arguments.
- KCUR / St. Louis Public Radio for Judge Clark's order, Hoskins's statement, and the election-officials reaction.
- KBIA for the Missouri Supreme Court show-cause order and the contempt proceedings.
- USA Today for the dueling-orders timeline.
- Al Jazeera for the House-majority arithmetic and the national redistricting context.