On Friday night, the Supreme Court finally put an end to Missouri Republicans’ quest to steal a congressional district for the 2026 midterms.
“The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri,” the per curiam order said, through what we presume were Kavanaugh’s gritted teeth. “The District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”
Last year, Donald Trump instructed his loyal minions to gerrymander congressional districts even more before the midterms. Apparently this is easier than actually enacting policies people like so they’ll want to vote for your party.
Missouri Republicans dutifully complied in September of 2025, passing HB1, which drew out longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s seat in Kansas City. That would have given the GOP a 7-1 map, despite the fact that roughly a third of Missouri’s registered voters are Democrats. But Missouri’s Constitution allows its citizens to challenge laws by subjecting them to referendum, and so a group called People Not Politicians (PNP) collected signatures to put HB1 on the ballot. That prevented the new map from going into effect for the November election.
Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and his infamous red blazer have been screwing with this referendum for almost a year now. First he rejected the ballot language multiple times, forcing PNP to collect signatures anew. Then, after sitting on the referendum for eight months, he blocked it an hour before the deadline on the theory that electoral maps were somehow exempt from the Constitution’s referendum provision.
PNP promptly sued, and the Missouri Supreme Court told Hoskins to cut the shit and use the 2022 map, since the 2025 HB1 map “is not the law and has never been the law.” Which really should have been the end of the matter!
Instead Hoskins filed a Hail Mary petition to the US Supreme Court asking Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who sits over the Eighth Circuit, to stay the Missouri Supreme Court decision. On September 8, Justice Kavanaugh denied Hoskins’s application. Which really, really should have been the end of the matter!
Instead, Judge Stephen Clark of the Eastern District of Missouri issued a temporary restraining order that same evening in a “friendly” suit brought by Missouri Rep. Bob Onder, who was effectively colluding with Hoskins to force through the HB1 map. Judge Clark ordered Hoskins to use the new, 7-1 map in November.
Hoskins promptly instructed county clerks to use the 2025 map, which earned him a contempt finding from the Missouri Supreme Court. But on September 10, the Supreme Court once again jumped in, staying Judge Clark’s TRO with no noted dissents. Facing possible contempt charges from the Missouri Supreme Court, Hoskins finally tapped out, telling his election clerks to use the 2022 map after all.
But then the Eighth Circuit said HOLD MY BEER. Purporting to believe that SCOTUS had tasked them with deciding the case immediately, on September 21, Judges James Loken and Justin Smith ordered Hoskins to go back and use the HB1 maps. The ruling hinged on a brand new reading of Article I, Section 2, which they said “requires continuity in the constituency throughout all stages of a single election.” They reasoned that switching maps between primary and general gives voters “two halves of two different procedures.”
This is not an interpretation of the Constitution that has ever been blessed by the Supreme Court. And, as the justices pointed out, the “election is not merely upcoming; it has already started.” Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and sent out, particularly to overseas service members, who are entitled to have their ballots mailed 45 days before the election under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). The Eighth Circuit’s Order would have disenfranchised thousands of voters, and so the appellate panel went to great pains to try to pin the blame for that chaos on the state Supreme Court.
The panel pointed to Purcell v. Gonzalez, the 2006 case in which the Court decreed that federal courts shouldn’t mess with election rules at the last minute. Of course, we wouldn’t be in extra innings if Hoskins hadn’t deliberately timed his decision so as to deny People Not Politicians time to seek redress in court. But Justice Kavanaugh loves nothing more than using Purcell to allow Republicans to use illegal maps, so, perhaps the Eighth Circuit hoped that he’d revert to form.
But even this court has a finite appetite for bullshit, and so, for yet a third time, it stayed the lower court’s order on Friday with no noted dissents.
“Given this Court’s two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise,” the justices wrote archly.
“On the merits, the Court’s precedents have not previously stated that Article I, Section 2 requires a state to use the primary election map in a general election,” they went on, brushing aside the Eighth Circuit’s newly discovered continuity rule. They also rejected the appeals court’s “incorrect” characterization of Purcell, which properly bars federal courts from intervening on the eve of an election, but allows state courts to “decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.”
And so, Missourians will finally get to decide if they want an offensively gerrymandered map or merely a preposterously gerrymandered one. And isn’t that what democracy is all about?
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
The post Brett Kavanaugh Has Had Enough Of Your BS, Eighth Circuit! appeared first on Above the Law.
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