Federal Appeals Court Revives Missouri GOP Map, Setting Up Third Supreme Court Fight in Three Weeks

A federal appeals court on Monday ordered Missouri to abandon the congressional map it has used since the state's Supreme Court intervened two weeks ago, ruling instead that the state must revert to the Republican-drawn lines that dismantle the only Democratic-held district in the Kansas City area. The decision, the latest reversal in a monthslong legal fight over the state's congressional map, throws the state's November ballot back into uncertainty just as absentee voting is getting underway.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled in a lawsuit brought by Rep. Bob Onder and state Sen. Rick Brattin that keeping the state's old, court-restored map in place for November would be unconstitutional, because Missouri already used the newer Republican map to conduct its August primary. Switching maps between the primary and the general election, the panel wrote, would violate the guarantee in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution that voters choose their representative through a single, complete election process. The panel put its own ruling on hold until September 28, giving challengers a week to ask the Supreme Court to step in again.

What happened

The map at the center of the fight was drawn by Missouri's Republican-controlled legislature in a special session last September and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe. It restructures Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's 5th District, which covers most of Kansas City, by splitting the city among three more rural, Republican-leaning districts, a change designed to push Missouri's congressional delegation from six Republicans and two Democrats to seven Republicans and one Democrat.

Opponents responded with a veto referendum drive, and the group People Not Politicians said it collected more than 300,000 signatures to force a statewide vote on the map. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously earlier this month that the pending referendum barred the state from using the new map in November and ordered election officials back to the map used since 2022, which keeps Cleaver's seat intact. That ruling briefly ended a monthslong standoff, but Onder, Brattin and two other plaintiffs then went to federal court, arguing that having already run the primary under the 2025 lines, the state could not lawfully change course for the general election. A federal district judge agreed and issued a restraining order; the 8th Circuit's ruling on Monday affirmed that outcome on appeal, describing the mismatch between primary and general-election maps as a distinct constitutional defect separate from the underlying gerrymandering dispute.

The numbers

Missouri has eight U.S. House seats. The 2025 map was pushed through the state House on a 90-65 vote and the state Senate on a 21-11 vote during the September 2025 special session, both largely along party lines. The 8th Circuit panel found that more than 1.4 million Missourians would be voting for a different set of congressional candidates than the ones they voted on in August if the state reverted to the old map, and that roughly a quarter-million primary voters who backed a candidate under the new lines would find that candidate no longer on their November ballot at all. The stay on the panel's order runs out at 5 p.m. Central time on September 28, the deadline by which challengers must persuade the Supreme Court to intervene or the 2025 map takes effect for the general election.

How we got here

Missouri's map has now flipped repeatedly since Kehoe signed the redrawn lines a year ago, a saga CNN described as setting up another Supreme Court battle the moment the 8th Circuit ruled. The St. Louis Public Radio account of Monday's ruling traces the sequence: the new map faced an immediate referendum challenge, was blocked, was reinstated by a different court, was used to conduct the August 4 primary, was blocked again by the state's highest court in early September, and has now been ordered restored by the federal appeals court, pending a near-certain trip back to Washington. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court twice during that stretch; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters from the 8th Circuit, declined to intervene on September 8, and the full court later left the state Supreme Court's map in place through a September 10 order. The case, tracked at the Supreme Court's docket as No. 26A326, has already produced one round of briefing there; People Not Politicians' opposition to a stay, filed with the justices earlier this month, argued that changing the rules so close to the election would confuse voters and overwhelm county clerks. The underlying dispute is part of a broader mid-decade redistricting push in several Republican-led states this cycle, but Missouri's is unusual in that the fight has been waged almost entirely in the courts rather than through direct negotiation, and has now produced conflicting rulings from the state's own Supreme Court and a federal appellate panel within the same three-week span. A separate account of Monday's decision, published by another outlet weighing whether the September 28 deadline could still save Democrats' only Missouri seat, frames the stay as a narrow window rather than a settled outcome.

Who is affected, and what people are saying

The most direct effect falls on Kansas City voters. Under the 2025 map, Cleaver's district loses most of its urban core in favor of rural counties that lean heavily Republican, a change that outside analysts and the map's own backers agree would make the seat far more competitive for the GOP than it has been in more than a decade. Voters in St. Louis, whose 1st District remains solidly Democratic under either map and where Rep. Wesley Bell defeated former Rep. Cori Bush in an August primary rematch, are largely insulated from the redraw regardless of which lines prevail. Election administrators across the state face a more immediate practical problem: absentee voting for Missourians with a qualifying excuse began this week, and county clerks had already begun mailing ballots to military and overseas voters before Monday's ruling, using the old map's district lines.

Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, said the timing made the panel's order effectively unworkable.

"Ballots have been printed, and Missourians have already voted. Thousands more will vote before this order seeks to take effect."

The 8th Circuit panel did not dispute that ballots were already moving, but concluded the constitutional problem with running mismatched maps across a single election cycle outweighed the disruption of changing course again. In its opinion, the panel wrote that Missouri's plan to use the 2022 map in November "violates the Constitution" and that "only use of the 2025 map complies with the Constitution and federal law," rejecting arguments that the pending statewide referendum should freeze the newer map's implementation. Cleaver, who has represented the Kansas City-based district for two decades, has said in earlier statements on the litigation that he expects to keep campaigning across whichever version of the district voters ultimately use in November, and Missouri Republicans who back the new map, including Onder, have argued in court filings that the state Supreme Court's intervention came too late in the election calendar to be workable.

What happens next

People Not Politicians has said it will ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief before the 8th Circuit's stay lapses on September 28, setting up a third trip to the justices in a month over the same set of district lines. A ruling by the Supreme Court, whether it acts before the deadline or lets the appellate order take effect by default, is likely to be the last word before Missouri's ballots are finalized, since the state's own election calendar leaves little room for further litigation once overseas and military ballots must be sent. Missouri election officials have said they can still adjust unprinted domestic ballots if a final map is set within the next several days, but any change after that point would risk delaying mail ballots statewide. Whatever map is ultimately used, the underlying referendum on the 2025 lines is still scheduled to appear before voters, meaning the boundaries Missourians vote under this November could be revisited again once the ballot measure itself is decided.