Federal judge orders Missouri to keep GOP-drawn House map, defying state's top court

A federal judge in St. Louis ordered Missouri on Tuesday to use the Republican-drawn congressional map that the state's own Supreme Court had just thrown out, setting up a direct conflict between a state and a federal court over which district lines will govern the November election.

Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark issued a 14-day temporary restraining order in a lawsuit brought by two Republican congressional candidates, barring Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using "any congressional district map other than the HB 1 map" for the general election. The order came within hours of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to deny Missouri's emergency request to freeze a September 3 ruling from the Missouri Supreme Court, which had found that the same map, known as House Bill 1, "is not the law and has never been the law."

The result is a state left with two courts issuing opposite commands to the same election officials, five weeks before ballots are certified and less than two months before Election Day.

How a map got thrown out twice

The fight traces back to a special legislative session Governor Mike Kehoe called in 2025, at what Democrats say was the White House's urging, to redraw Missouri's eight congressional districts before the next census rather than after it. The Legislature passed HB 1, and Kehoe signed what the state calls the "Missouri First Map," reconfiguring the Kansas City-area 5th District held by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

Opponents organized under the banner People Not Politicians and gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force a statewide referendum on the map, a threshold well above what Missouri's constitution requires. Hoskins, a Republican, initially declined to certify the referendum, arguing the mid-decade map was not subject to a public vote. That set off months of litigation that culminated on September 3, when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the referendum petition had lawfully suspended HB 1 before it took effect, and ordered the state to revert to the 2022 map for November while voters decide the new one's fate on the same ballot.

Missouri's August 4 primary was already run under HB 1's lines, a fact that became central to Judge Clark's reasoning. Attorney General Catherine Hanaway had asked the Supreme Court to stay the state ruling while the fight continued; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency applications from the region, denied that request on Tuesday. Republican candidates Bob Onder and Rick Brattin then pressed their separate federal claim, and Clark ruled within hours, reasoning that switching maps after a primary had already been conducted under HB 1 would violate the Equal Protection Clause and Article I's guarantee that primary voters help choose their party's nominee. He also invoked what he called a "Purcell in reverse" logic, framing HB 1, not the older map, as the true status quo. "Using a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of Missouri's congressional elections," Clark wrote, adding that "widespread voter confusion would inevitably follow."

A Kansas City district cut along Troost Avenue

The map at the center of the fight redraws Missouri's 5th District, which Cleaver has represented since 2005 and won each of his last two elections with more than 60 percent of the vote. HB 1 splits Kansas City along Troost Avenue, long a racial and economic dividing line in the city, extending the 5th roughly 200 miles east into rural Osage and Maries counties while shifting other Kansas City voters into the 4th and 6th Districts. Republican state Rep. Brattin, one of the federal plaintiffs, has called the redrawn 5th "practically unwinnable" for a Democrat; the 2022 map that the state Supreme Court ordered restored keeps Kansas City largely intact within a single district.

Beyond Cleaver's own prospects, the dispute affects every Missouri voter who cast a primary ballot in August, since Clark's order effectively locks in the district lines drawn around them regardless of which map eventually survives on appeal. It also reaches well past Missouri: Republicans have pursued similar mid-decade redistricting pushes in Texas and other states this cycle, part of a broader effort to shore up the House majority in the midterms, making Missouri's outcome a test case for how far mid-cycle map changes can go before courts intervene.

Contempt of one court or the other

Hoskins said Tuesday's federal order "halts a full-on constitutional crisis," and Kehoe thanked Clark in an official statement for providing "much-needed clarity for Missouri voters and the election process," adding that "voters and candidates deserve consistency, certainty, and not to have the rules changed between elections." Hanaway said her office intended "to comply with this federal ruling."

Cleaver, who had called the September 3 state ruling a vindication after the mid-decade redraw he condemned in a statement from his congressional office last year, told reporters after that ruling that he was surprised the state's justices had been unanimous. His office had not issued a new statement on Clark's order as of Tuesday night.

People Not Politicians and its executive director, Richard von Glahn, argued in emergency filings in both the Eighth Circuit and the Missouri Supreme Court that Clark's order left election officials with no lawful path forward at all.

"If they use the HB 1 map, they are in contempt of the Missouri Supreme Court; if they use any other map, they are in contempt of the federal district court."

Von Glahn asked the Eighth Circuit to pause Clark's order pending appeal and separately asked the Missouri Supreme Court to hold Hoskins in contempt for announcing he would follow HB 1 despite the state court's injunction. Attorney General Hanaway had earlier defended the state's position in a filing arguing that the state court's ruling improperly interfered with the Legislature's constitutional authority over federal elections, a position laid out in the state's stay application to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Clark's temporary restraining order runs 14 days, after which he is expected to hold a hearing on a preliminary injunction that would need to last through November. Hoskins' office faces its own separate deadline pressure: Tuesday was the state's cutoff for finalizing changes to the November ballot, though officials indicated the ballot could still be adjusted if a higher court steps in before printing begins. The competing rulings leave open the possibility that the map used in November could still change again before Election Day, either through the Eighth Circuit's review of Clark's order or a renewed emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has so far avoided ruling on the merits of the underlying dispute.