Missouri will run its November general election on congressional districts drawn in 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency stay on Thursday, September 10, 2026, blocking the redrawn map backed by President Donald Trump — even though the state’s primary had already been conducted on the new lines.
The justices explained nothing, issuing instead a brief, unsigned order of the sort the court commonly produces on emergency applications. “The application for stay presented to Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh and by him referred to the Court is granted,” it read. No justice publicly dissented.
What the Stay Does Not Do
Nothing in the action reached the merits. The court did not declare the map unconstitutional and issued no opinion; the move was procedural. It froze a ruling by Stephen Clark, chief judge of the federal district court covering eastern Missouri, for the length of the appeal and any petition to review what the appeals court decides. That leaves the Missouri Supreme Court’s order as the only governing one, and the 2022 map applies — the second time the new districts have been blocked.
Two Courts, Two Conflicting Orders
Missouri Republicans passed the redrawn districts, known as HB 1, in a special session, and Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the plan on September 28, 2025. A unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruled on September 3 that the new lines had never taken legal effect because opponents filed a referendum petition two days before the map was due to take hold, and directed that the earlier districts govern unless voters approve the switch. Judge Ginger Gooch, writing for the court, called Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ warnings of confusion and expense “wholly unpersuasive” and said his own delay had created them.
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway took an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Hoskins’ behalf. Such appeals from Missouri go to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and on September 8 he denied it alone rather than referring it to his colleagues.
Clark moved within the hour, ordering the state to use the 2025 map instead. Republican Rep. Robert Onder, who holds Missouri’s 3rd District, had brought the federal case on September 4 with state Sen. Rick Brattin — the Republican nominee against Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in the redrawn 5th — and two voters. Without relief, Clark reasoned, many voters would have to choose among nominees they had no hand in selecting.
The two intervenors, referendum organizer Richard von Glahn and the group People Not Politicians, asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt Clark’s order. It refused on September 9, and they went to the justices that afternoon, arguing that state law alone underpinned the Missouri ruling and left federal courts no power to weigh in. The stay granted the next day was theirs.
A Primary and a General on Different Maps
Voters cast primary ballots on August 4 under the new districts, and the general election will now run on the 2022 map. Nine days separated the order from the federal deadline for military ballots, though election authorities were working to a Friday mailing.
Hoskins said the Missouri Supreme Court’s order is now the only one in effect. “In accordance with that order, my Office is directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map,” he said. His earlier instruction to use the new districts had drawn a contempt hearing on September 10, which a federal judge refused to halt. Chief Justice W. Brent Powell found him in contempt, then ruled the same day that his reversal had purged it.
Hoskins now faces two class actions. Five voters sued in Cole County on September 11 seeking up to $500 each for roughly 162,000 people whose petition signatures were verified — about $80 million — under a 1945 statute on a secretary of state’s failure to do his duty. Two more sued on September 16.
Reaction and the November Ballot
Ally Triolo, the Republican National Committee’s election integrity communications director, said the “11th-hour ruling pulls the rug out from under voters who already cast their primary ballots. Changing the rules mid-election is reckless and wrong.” Republican state officials have argued that switching districts before November would violate voters’ federal rights.
The redrawn map does not eliminate Cleaver’s Kansas City-based 5th District, but it guts it, splitting the city among three districts, running the new western boundary along Troost Avenue, the historic racial dividing line, and stretching the seat nearly 200 miles east. Inside Elections measured the swing at D+23 to R+17. Republicans stood a strong chance of taking seven of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats, up from six, and hold a 219-214 edge in the chamber counting Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the party in March and still caucuses with them.
Opponents submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures in December 2025. Hoskins rejected the petition on August 4, the last day available to him, and von Glahn sued. The Missouri Supreme Court then placed the measure on the November 3 ballot as Proposition A, a veto referendum: a yes vote enacts the redrawn districts for future elections, a no vote keeps the 2022 lines.
The Appeal Runs Out of Runway
Trump backed the map and, the night the state court ruled, wrote on Truth Social that it had “ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago” — “a Dark Day for ‘Justice’ in Missouri.” He has not responded publicly to the September 10 order.
The 8th Circuit heard argument on Thursday, September 17, before judges James Loken, David Stras and Justin Smith, and had not ruled by day’s end. The panel spent much of the hour on whether anything can still be changed. “Can we come to a disposition in time for there to be an election?” Loken asked. Chuck Hatfield, for People Not Politicians, agreed with the clerks who told the court the window was shut: “It’s already too late. Those ballots are printed.” What remains live is the merits — and Proposition A, which decides which map governs from 2028.