For the third time in lower than a month, the Supreme Court docket on Friday declined to permit Missouri to make use of a brand new congressional map, supposed to learn Republicans, within the November 2026 elections. In a five-page, unsigned order, the justices paused a ruling by a federal appeals court in St. Louis that had directed the state to implement the brand new map.
In Friday’s opinion, which was launched to reporters shortly earlier than 6 p.m. EDT, the courtroom emphasised that the federal district and appeals courts “shouldn’t enjoin or in any other case prohibit using the” map enacted in 2022, which is presently in use in voting already underway, “within the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.” Furthermore, the courtroom added, these courts “shouldn’t order or in any other case require Missouri to make use of the” new map “within the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”
There have been no public dissents from the Supreme Court docket’s opinion.
The dispute started in September 2025, when Missouri adopted a brand new map that was supposed to provide Republicans an extra seat within the U.S. Home of Representatives. On Dec. 9, opponents of the state’s new map – together with the group Folks Not Politicians and its government director, Richard von Glahn – submitted greater than 300,000 signatures in assist of a petition to place the brand new map up for a vote on the poll within the November 2026 basic election. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, Missouri’s prime election official, rejected the petition on Aug. 4, 2026 – the final day to take action – and the state carried out its August main with the brand new map.
Von Glahn then went to state courtroom, asking it to reverse Hoskins’ resolution and prohibit Missouri from utilizing the brand new map within the November elections. In a unanimous decision on Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court docket did simply that. Below the Missouri Structure, it held, the referendum petition “was authorized, ample, and well timed.” In consequence, that courtroom stated, the brand new map by no means went into impact and won’t accomplish that “until and till accepted by the voters on the November 2026 basic election.”
The dispute made its first trip to the Supreme Court docket on Sept. 4, when Hoskins asked the justices to place the state supreme courtroom’s ruling on maintain. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has preliminary duty for emergency appeals from the geographic space that features Missouri, denied Hoskins’ request 4 days later with out referring it to the total courtroom.
Additionally on Sept. 4, Rep. Robert Onder, a Republican who gained the Republican nomination for the state’s third congressional district within the August 2026 main, in addition to one other congressional candidate and two particular person voters, filed a lawsuit in federal courtroom in St. Louis, searching for to revive the 2025 map. Onder and the opposite candidate – Richard Brattin, who gained the Republican nomination for the state’s fifth congressional district in August – contended that if the state had been to make use of the earlier map, from 2022, within the November elections, their districts can be considerably completely different from the districts through which they gained the nominations within the August main elections. The person voters equally argued that they might vote in a distinct district in November beneath the 2022 map than they’d in August.
Shortly after Kavanaugh turned down Hoskins’ request to pause the Missouri Supreme Court docket’s ruling, Chief U.S. District Choose Stephen Clark issued an order that directed the state to make use of the 2025 map. Clark wrote that though “[c]onducting state elections in accordance with the Missouri Structure undoubtedly qualifies as an necessary curiosity,” Onder and the opposite plaintiffs would “face irreparable hurt” with out a momentary restraining order “as a result of many Missouri voters must solid their general-election votes for candidates whom they’d no function in nominating.”
The dispute arrived on the Supreme Court docket for the second time on Sept. 9, when von Glahn and Folks Not Politicians asked the justices to intervene and pause the district courtroom’s order. The subsequent day, inside minutes after Hoskins filed his transient opposing a keep of Clark’s order, the Supreme Court docket – in a brief, unsigned order – did so, placing Clark’s order on maintain “pending the disposition of the attraction in the US Court docket of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari on this Court docket, if such a writ is well timed sought.”
The dispute then returned to the decrease courts, the place the eighth Circuit expedited the attraction by von Glahn and Folks Not Politicians. That courtroom heard oral arguments on Sept. 17 and issued a decision upholding Clark’s order on Sept. 21. The courtroom of appeals additionally directed Clark to enter a everlasting order requiring the state to make use of the 2025 map, but additionally to place that order on maintain till 5 p.m. CDT on Sept. 28 to provide the Supreme Court docket time to weigh in.
Folks Not Politicians and von Glahn came back to the Supreme Court – the dispute’s third trip there –on Sept. 22. They requested the justices both to “make clear” that the courtroom’s Sept. 10 order pausing Clark’s order “means what it says” or, alternatively, put the eighth Circuit’s Monday ruling on maintain. The courtroom ought to accomplish that, they argued, as a result of the Supreme Court docket’s orders “should not invites for a decrease courtroom to repackage the identical reduction and take a look at once more.” It’s too late, they continued, to revive the 2025 map, as a result of the state has already despatched out ballots to army and abroad voters, and Sept. 22 was the deadline for election officers to “print and make out there absentee ballots.”
Missouri and the individual plaintiffs supporting the 2025 map countered that Folks Not Politicians and von Glahn shouldn’t have a authorized proper, often known as standing, to pursue their attraction. Amongst different issues, Missouri pointed to the Supreme Court docket’s 2013 resolution in Hollingsworth v. Perry, holding that the proponents of a California initiative to ban same-sex marriage lacked standing to defend the legislation’s constitutionality when the state declined to take action.
The state additionally pushed again in opposition to any suggestion that it’s too late to reinstate the 2025 map, telling the justices that “[t]he sincere fact is that the chaos injected by the Missouri Supreme Court docket,” which barred the state from utilizing the 2025 map, “will stay it doesn’t matter what this Court docket does.” “Greater than something,” the state continued, “Missouri voters want stability. The Secretary [of State] respectfully believes that denying a keep—and declining to alter Missouri’s congressional map for a fifth time—is one of the simplest ways to advertise stability.”
In its opinion on Friday granting the request from Folks Not Politicians and von Glahn, the courtroom started by observing that, “as a matter of state legislation, the 2022 map—not the 2025 map—have to be used within the 2026 congressional election.” Furthermore, the courtroom added, placing the decrease courts’ most up-to-date rulings on maintain is “[c]onsistent with” the Supreme Court docket’s Sept. 10 order pausing Clark’s earlier resolution.
However “[e]ven placing this Court docket’s prior orders apart,” the courtroom continued, the lower-court rulings must also be paused as a result of “[t]he election just isn’t merely upcoming; it has already began.” “At this late date,” the courtroom wrote, reverting to the 2025 map “would usher in electoral chaos.”
The courtroom additionally confused that the eighth Circuit was fallacious in suggesting that utilizing the 2025 map can be most in keeping with the Purcell precept – the concept courts shouldn’t change election guidelines too near an election – as a result of the Missouri Supreme Court docket was accountable for upsetting the established order. Federal courts, the justices stated, shouldn’t intervene with elections on the final minute, however states can usually make their very own selections. And right here, the courtroom emphasised, the Missouri Supreme Court docket was not accountable for disturbing the established order, as a result of it had indicated in Might 2026 that “if the referendum petition was legally ample,” then the 2025 map would solely go into impact after it had been accepted by the voters.