Missouri is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let the state use a new congressional map in the November elections, a plan designed to give Republicans an additional seat in the House. The state and a group of candidates and voters filed a request on Wednesday afternoon, asking the justices to keep in place a ruling from a federal appeals court. That ruling directs Missouri to use the map that was enacted in 2025.
Legal dispute over the new map
The filing came less than 18 hours after opponents of the map urged the court to pause a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The opponents, including the group People Not Politicians, have already won twice before the court. They argued that a Supreme Court order from September 10 should remain in effect and block the state from using the new map.
Missouri and the individual plaintiffs, led by Rep. Robert Onder, argued that the challengers lack legal standing to pursue their appeal. The state cited a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Hollingsworth v. Perry, which held that proponents of an initiative lack standing when the state declines to defend the law. The individual plaintiffs also told the court that the challengers are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims.
The individual plaintiffs described the appeals court’s decision as “narrow and unremarkable in scope.” They noted that the court of appeals does not hold that voters have a right to any particular candidate, nor does it freeze Missouri’s map for future election cycles. The ruling, they said, applies only to the general election that follows the primary.
State argues for stability
Missouri’s Solicitor General Louis Capozzi warned the justices that pausing the appeals court’s ruling would cause “voter and candidate confusion” and force candidates to run in new districts they have not campaigned in over the past year. He added that hundreds of thousands of voters in the Primary Election would be disenfranchised.
The state told the justices that the “honest truth is that the chaos injected by the Missouri Supreme Court” will remain regardless of what the Supreme Court decides. Denny Hoskins, Missouri’s Secretary of State, stated that denying a stay and declining to change the map for a fifth time is the best way to promote stability for Missouri voters.
