Supreme Court denies Missouri’s bid to use Republican-drawn map in November

Republicans lost a round in the redistricting war Tuesday, and then the picture immediately got murkier.

Announcement

According to CNN, the Supreme Court turned away Missouri’s request to use a congressional map for November that would have positioned the GOP to flip a seat.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters from that region, issued the denial himself without referring it to the full court, offering no reasoning and drawing no dissents. Declining to involve his colleagues signaled he considered the appeal insufficiently weighty.

Minutes later, a separate federal trial court in Missouri issued an order barring the state from using any map other than the contested one. U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, wrote that swapping maps between the primary and general election would create confusion serious enough to call into question both the candidacies decided in August and the votes cast for them.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said the state would comply with the newer ruling, maintaining that a midstream change would be unworkable and unfair to voters.

The disputed map was drawn to target the 5th Congressional District held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, dismantling its Kansas City base and extending it into rural Republican territory.

Missouri’s Supreme Court ruled last week that state officials had improperly rejected a referendum petition carrying more than 300,000 signatures. Notably, per CNN, officials sat on that petition until Aug. 4, the final possible day and the date of the primary itself, before declaring redistricting exempt from voter review.

Should the map ultimately fall, Republicans would still net nine House seats from redistricting efforts elsewhere. CNN noted the current court has already reshaped this cycle considerably, gutting a core provision of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, which triggered new maps across Southern states.