After a flurry of court rulings, Missouri’s congressional redistricting maps are in a paradoxical state.
The issue stems from two competing orders, one from the Missouri Supreme Court, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to stand, and one from the federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The orders directly contradict each other on which version of Missouri’s congressional maps must be used.
Which map ends up on top will have consequences for the November elections and for communities, like Kansas City, that were split by the gerrymandered “Missouri First” map.
The confusion started when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that a referendum challenging gerrymandered redistricting maps passed in 2025 would be allowed on the November ballot.
The court prohibited the use of the gerrymandered map for the November general election, meaning people would have reverted to voting in the districts they used for the 2024 election.
It also rebuffed Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ argument that reverting to the old maps would cause chaos and that it would be unconstitutional to run the November elections on a different map than the one used in August.
“Besides being irrelevant to the secretary’s sole basis for declaring the referendum petition insufficient, these arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary’s delay created the confusion, expense and practical difficulties of which he complains,” Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the state Supreme Court’s opinion.
Hoskins and Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway then filed an emergency appeal to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Friday, asking for a stay of the state Supreme Court’s order to use the old maps.
The attorney general’s office argued the decision violates federal law and that it is “technically impossible” for the state to switch the maps in time, an assertion that county election officials have disputed.
At the same time, 3rd District U.S. Rep. Bob Onder and 5th District state Sen. Rick Brattin, the Republican candidates for their districts, and two voters filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Missouri court against Hoskins also asking that the order be blocked.
On Tuesday, Kavanaugh rejected the state’s request for a stay of the order and left the court’s order to use the old maps in place.
Just minutes later, though, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark of the Eastern District of Missouri issued a temporary restraining order in the Onder case that bars Hoskins from using anything other than the 2025 maps.
The attorney general’s office put out a press release saying it would comply with Clark’s order. In an email to local election authorities, Hoskins said to use the 2025 maps, according to Missouri Independent reporting.
The Missouri Supreme Court then directed Hoskins to attend a hearing on Thursday to explain “why he should not be held in contempt for violating this Court’s injunction” against using the new map.
The conflicting orders created instant confusion and leave in doubt which map will be used as election officials prepare to start printing ballots to send to overseas military members.
It also raises larger questions about communities receiving accurate political representation and where the concentration of power lies.
“The effort to undo a district in Kansas City that had already been a part of a gerrymandered map seems extra gratuitous,” said Kareem Crayton, the vice president for the Brennan Center of Justice. “It sort of tees up the question of whether the point of all of this was to do anything to represent people or just sort of entrench those who are in power.”
What’s at stake
Through many redistricting cycles, areas like Kansas City have remained more or less within the same congressional districts.
That has its advantages. An area’s representatives are familiar with what it needs and have the institutional knowledge to secure the resources to address those needs.
But under the Missouri First maps, that stability would disappear for some districts. Kansas City, for example, would be split among the 4th, 5th and 6th congressional districts. All are projected to be Republican-leaning seats.
That shift raises serious questions about progressive areas like Kansas City receiving accurate political representation in Congress.
Greg Vonnahme, an associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said that having three Republican officials representing the more progressive Kansas City area can make it complicated to ensure constituent needs are properly addressed.
“There’s the high-level national political representation. How are these members voting on healthcare, on abortion, on guns? That’s probably not going to look very representative,” Vonnahme said.
Then there’s the question of what representation “looks like for the city. Are they still responsive to Kansas City needs? Are they still helping to direct federal programs and federal dollars to local infrastructure, to local projects?”
With the gerrymandered districts stretching into more rural areas, candidates in those districts may not be as responsive to Kansas City voters since they could assume that the majority would not vote for them anyway.
Another issue, Vonnahme said, is that when one party is likely to win a general election by a large margin it shifts the onus of electing candidates onto primary elections.
Primary elections tend to have lower turnout rates than the general election does. That means a smaller, more polarized subset of voters is responsible for choosing candidates that are almost guaranteed to win in districts that were gerrymandered to be “safe.”
Erik Nisbet, a professor of policy analysis and communication at Northwestern University, said when that happens, it makes it harder to hold politicians accountable at the ballot box.
“How do voters in general, beyond those who basically are the party faithful, who vote in a primary, how do they keep their candidate accountable?” Nisbet said. “When basically in a general election it’s unlikely for them to actually have a meaningful impact on election outcome.”
Which maps get used has overarching implications for the quality of democracy voters participate in as well.
Most voters aren’t bought in on the idea of partisan antipathy, Vonnahme said, so attempts to gerrymander maps cut against the innate sense of fairness and community people have for elections.
“You start with partisan gerrymandering — which the average voter looks at as basically dirty political tricks — so it doesn’t inspire confidence to see parties intentionally engineering districts without regard for local boundaries,” Vonnahme said. “People have a sense of their community. Like this is my town, this is my county, these are my neighborhoods and then they just get hatcheted up for partisan purposes.”
That can be discouraging for voters, making them less likely to vote and further contributing to polarized party factions selecting candidates.
The concentration of power with a select few through gerrymandering has wider implications for the nation and Congress’ ability to carry out its duties as well.
“It creates greater polarization and gridlock in Congress, where Congress can’t get anything done, even if it wanted to,” Nisbet said. “It cannot actually do its constitutional responsibility of being a check on the two other branches of government. They’re supposed to be accountable to each other and you can’t engage in accountability when it’s so polarized.”
While one seat in the grand scheme of things might not seem like much right away, what’s happening in Missouri is a wider warning, Nisbet said.
“The idea is that democracy withers not because of a coup or some sudden event. It withers from 1,000 cuts over time,” Nisbet said. “In the larger scheme of things, this is just a steady slide that erodes the quality of our democracy and our ability to keep our elected representatives accountable.”
