Missouri has two maps and one election — which court bends?

Which map do you use when two courts order you to use opposite maps? That is not a law-school hypothetical in Missouri this week. It is the instruction sitting on the desk of Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who has been told by the state’s highest court that the new congressional map never became law — and told by a federal judge that he must use it anyway.⁷¹²

The prize is one seat in Congress, and potentially control of the U.S. House. Under the lines used in 2022, Missouri sends six Republicans and two Democrats to Washington. House Bill 1, passed in a 2025 special session, would make it seven Republicans and one Democrat.²²²⁶ The mechanism is a familiar one: divide Kansas City across Districts 4, 5 and 6 and stretch what is left of the 5th into rural Republican territory.²² The district it was drawn to erase is held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.²⁶

On paper the plan was a triumph of mid-decade muscle. After a White House and national-party push for extra Republican House seats, Gov. Mike Kehoe called a special session, the House passed HB 1 by 90-65 and the Senate by 21-11, and Kehoe signed it on September 28, 2025.²² That is where normal redistricting politics ended and Missouri constitutional law took over.

Missouri draws Congress differently from how it draws Jefferson City. State legislative maps go to commissions created by the 2018 and 2020 amendments; congressional maps are ordinary statutes passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor.²⁸ Ordinary statutes can be referred to voters, and that is what opponents did.⁶

On September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that HB 1 did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters, with the 2022 districts remaining in full force for November.⁶ The reason was not compactness or partisan fairness. Earlier in 2026 the same court had rejected a compactness attack on the map.¹¹ The reason was timing and text: Article III, Section 49 allows referendum on any act of the general assembly, and congressional redistricting falls outside the narrow exceptions for peace, health, safety or support of state government.⁶ A timely, valid petition therefore suspends the act.⁶

The petition was led by Richard von Glahn of People Not Politicians Missouri, which collected more than 300,000 signatures.² Secretary Hoskins rejected it on August 4, 2026 — primary day and the last statutory day — on the theory that the constitution does not permit a referendum on congressional maps.⁶ The court called that theory wrong, treated claims of administrative chaos as legally irrelevant and in part self-inflicted by the late rejection, and ordered the referendum onto the November ballot.⁶ Five of the seven justices were appointed by Republican governors, but the vote against the Republican map was unanimous.³¹

What the state court did not do is as important as what it did. It did not declare HB 1 a permanent gerrymander. It declared it a non-law, frozen until voters decide.⁶ That is why the next step looked routine: on September 8, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, acting as circuit justice for the Eighth Circuit, denied Missouri’s emergency request to use the new map, leaving the state injunction in place with no opinion, no referral to the full Court and no noted dissent.⁹²⁵

Minutes later the case changed courts — and theories. Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark in St. Louis, in a suit brought by Rep. Bob Onder and other Republican-aligned voters and candidates, granted a 14-day temporary restraining order barring use of any map other than HB 1.¹²¹⁶ His question was not whether HB 1 was validly enacted. It was what happens when you switch maps after voting has already started.¹⁵

About 1.2 million Missourians had already voted in the August 4 primaries on HB 1 lines.¹⁵ Clark said forcing the November general election back onto 2022 lines would make voters choose among general-election candidates they did not nominate and strand nominated candidates in different districts — a likely equal-protection injury producing widespread voter confusion and havoc on the fairness and orderliness of the election.¹⁵²⁰ He invoked the Purcell principle against last-minute election changes, but in reverse: not to freeze the old status quo, but to lock in the map already used.²⁰

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and Hoskins said they would comply with Clark.²³ That compliance is itself a violation of the September 3 injunction.⁷ Through Chief Justice W. Brent Powell, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Hoskins to appear Thursday morning to show cause why he should not be held in contempt.²³ Clark refused to halt that contempt proceeding.³⁴ On September 9, the Eighth Circuit in a one-page ruling declined to stay Clark’s order.³³ Within a day von Glahn and People Not Politicians, represented by Abha Khanna of Elias Law Group, filed a new emergency application for a stay and administrative stay at the U.S. Supreme Court, with a Thursday-morning response deadline.⁸³⁶

The calendar now does as much work as the case law. Military and overseas ballots are due around September 19, and county ballot-programming deadlines are already passing.²² Whichever map is loaded is likely to stay loaded, which means delay is itself a form of relief — either for the referendum right or for the redraw.³²