US Supreme Court blocks Missouri's gerrymandered map for a third time

Kacen Bayless, The Kansas City Star on Sep 25, 2026

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked Missouri from using a gerrymandered congressional map in the Nov. 3 election, allowing the state to use a map lawmakers passed in 2022 and likely drawing to a close a messy legal battle.

The nation’s highest court blocked two lower court rulings in favor of the Republican-backed map and ordered those courts to not require use of the map in the election.

The ruling marked the third time the Supreme Court has ruled against the map and likely signaled the death knell for a Republican push to use its boundaries in the Nov. 3 election. Lawmakers redrew the map last year under pressure from President Donald Trump, splitting up Kansas City in the hopes of ousting Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

“At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos,” the order said.

Missouri’s new map kicked off one of the most chaotic election sagas in the country amid a nationwide mid-decade redistricting blitz.

Weeks after convening the state’s top Republican lawmakers for a private meeting, Gov. Mike Kehoe in August called a special session to redraw the map. Lawmakers passed the map in September 2025, hoping to secure for Republicans seven of the state’s eight districts.

Opponents quickly responded, launching a campaign to ask voters to reject the map in a statewide referendum vote. That campaign, called People Not Politicians, was also designed to freeze the map until the Nov. 3 vote.

But roughly eight months after the campaign turned in more than 300,000 signatures to force that vote, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the measure from the ballot. Missouri held its primary elections using the 2025 gerrymandered map.

The Missouri Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision earlier this month, found that Hoskins was wrong to reject the referendum. That ruling placed the referendum on the ballot and blocked the state from using the gerrymandered map in the Nov. 3 election.

A flurry of contradictory rulings followed. Federal judges in St. Louis ruled in favor of the 2025 map, while the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against it twice. The chaos has upended the state’s upcoming election, sparking uncertainty among voters and election authorities about which map should be used.

The state Supreme Court also found Hoskins in contempt after he ordered local election officials to use the new map. The court acknowledged, however, that he wiped away that charge when he reversed course.

Amid the turmoil, voting has already started. Local election authorities pressed forward with absentee and overseas voting under a congressional map lawmakers passed in 2022.

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