Supreme Court Leaves Missouri's Old Congressional Map in Place for 2026 Midterms
The US Supreme Court on September 8, 2026 denied an emergency request from Missouri officials who wanted to use a newly drawn, Republican-backed congressional map in the November midterms. The decision leaves in place a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that blocked the new districts from taking effect (The Guardian, 2026-09-08).
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters from the Eighth Circuit's geographic jurisdiction, denied the stay request. A "stay" is a court order that temporarily pauses a lower court's decision while appeals play out. The application was docketed as No. 26A-304 in the case Hoskins v. von Glahn (Supreme Court docket, 2026-09-04). The applicants argued that the Missouri Supreme Court's injunction "patently violates the US Constitution" by changing Missouri's congressional map for the 2026 election cycle.
The dispute traces back to Missouri House Bill 1 (HB 1), a Republican-drawn congressional map pushed through the state legislature in 2025 (Missouri Independent, 2026-09-03). Republicans had calculated that the new boundaries could help them pick up an additional House seat and shore up their slim majority in the chamber (PBS NewsHour, 2026-09-04).
On September 3, 2026, the Missouri Supreme Court (case No. SC101805) blocked HB 1 from use in the November elections (Reuters, 2026-09-03). The court held that the plain language of Article III, Section 49 of the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum on "any act of the general assembly." A referendum is a process that lets voters directly approve or reject a law passed by the legislature. That meant HB 1 was subject to voter approval or rejection before it could take effect (Missouri Supreme Court opinion, 2026-09-03). The court further ruled that the window to change the congressional map for the 2026 elections had already closed (Supreme Court appendix, 2026-09-04).
The effect of the Missouri Supreme Court's injunction was to bring back the repealed 2022 congressional map and prevent the state from using its newly enacted 2026 map (Supreme Court stay brief, 2026-09-04). In other words, the state reverted to the prior decade's districts for the upcoming election.
Donald Trump, who had backed the new map, called the Missouri Supreme Court's decision "horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional" (The Guardian, 2026-09-08). Missouri's Republican attorney general, Catherine Hanaway, pledged to appeal the state court ruling to the US Supreme Court. On September 5, 2026, Missouri formally asked the high court to revive the map for November (Reuters, 2026-09-05). Three days later, that request was denied.
The Supreme Court's ruling is a rare setback for Trump and Republicans in the national redistricting battle (The Guardian, 2026-09-08). The decision leaves Missouri running its 2026 midterms under the older 2022 map, a configuration that offers less favorable terrain for Republican seat-maximization than the HB 1 replacement the legislature enacted last year.
The broader context here is the intersection of two legal doctrines that rarely converge so directly: the referendum power reserved to voters under state constitutions, and the federal courts' emergency docket as a vehicle for overriding state-level electoral timing decisions. The Missouri Supreme Court grounded its ruling in a straightforward textual reading of Article III, Section 49, finding no carve-out for congressional redistricting legislation from the referendum process. Think of it like a veto power that sits with the voters rather than the governor: if enough citizens petition, a law passed by the legislature goes on the ballot for the public to accept or reject. That holding, if it withstands further review, would establish that even legislatively enacted maps in Missouri are subject to voter veto before taking effect, a constraint that could reshape how both parties approach mapmaking in the state going forward.
For Republicans, the practical cost is immediate. The 2022 map under which November's elections will now be conducted was itself a product of negotiation and compromise, and it does not contain the district configurations HB 1 was designed to produce. With the House majority hanging on a narrow margin, the loss of a potentially friendlier map in even one state carries weight. The case also reveals the limits of the Supreme Court's emergency docket as a tool for reversing state court electoral rulings; the justices declined to intervene at the stay stage, leaving the state court's reasoning intact without briefing on the merits.
Whether the underlying constitutional questions raised in Hoskins v. von Glahn, particularly the applicants' argument that the Missouri Supreme Court's injunction violated the US Constitution, receive further litigation is an open question.
