The Supreme Court’s intervention centers on a fierce battle over Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Republicans’ 2025 redistricting plan dramatically altered the Kansas City-area district, creating a potential path for the GOP to win seven of the state’s eight seats in the U.S. House.
Supporters of the challenge argue that Missouri officials must follow the state constitution and the rulings of the state’s highest court.
“The law is the law, the Missouri constitution is clear, as was the Missouri Supreme Court,” von Glahn said in a statement.
Von Glahn also sharply criticized Republican Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who had sought to move forward with the 2025 boundaries after the state’s primary election was conducted using those districts.
Hoskins “has shown that he cannot effectively do the job he was elected to do,” von Glahn added.
Thursday’s order temporarily freezes a decision handed down Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark. Clark had ruled that Missouri should use the 2025 congressional map, even though the Missouri Supreme Court had previously blocked the state from putting those boundaries into effect.
Hoskins’ legal team made an urgent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that Clark’s ruling was essential to prevent confusion and disruption after voters had already participated in the August primary under the new district lines.
His attorneys told the justices that Clark’s order was the only thing “preventing the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters” who cast ballots in the August primary using the new districts.
They further argued that Missouri needed the federal court’s ruling to “conduct congressional elections that comply with the federal election calendar.”
The Trump administration also entered the legal fight on Hoskins’ side. Federal officials warned the Supreme Court that blocking Clark’s decision could create serious problems for Missouri election administrators.
The administration argued that doing so would “jeopardize state officials’ ability to conduct a timely and lawful federal election.”
The latest Supreme Court action marks the second time in just days that the Missouri redistricting dispute has reached the nation’s highest court.
On Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected an earlier request from Hoskins to prevent enforcement of a Missouri Supreme Court decision blocking the 2025 congressional map.
The underlying dispute began in 2025, when Missouri Republicans launched an effort to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The move came as President Donald Trump encouraged Republican-controlled states to consider new congressional maps ahead of the 2026 elections.
Republicans argued that the new boundaries were necessary to better reflect the state’s political makeup and strengthen their congressional position.
The proposed map, however, faced immediate opposition from Democrats and activists who argued that the changes unfairly targeted Cleaver’s district.
Opponents eventually collected more than 300,000 signatures in an effort to place the redistricting plan before Missouri voters through a referendum.
Hoskins rejected the referendum effort, maintaining that Missouri’s congressional redistricting legislation was not eligible for the state’s referendum process.
That decision was unanimously rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court.
On September 3, the state’s highest court ruled that Missouri’s Constitution permits voters to approve or reject “any act of the general assembly” through the referendum process unless the Constitution specifically excludes the legislation from such a challenge.
The court determined that congressional redistricting did not fall under one of those exceptions.
The justices therefore ordered Hoskins to certify the referendum and place it on the November ballot.
The state Supreme Court went even further, concluding that the 2025 redistricting legislation had not taken effect because the referendum petition had been filed. As a result, the 2022 congressional map remained the operative map for the 2026 election.
Republicans then pursued a separate federal lawsuit.
The plaintiffs included Republican congressional nominee Rick Brattin, GOP Rep. Bob Onder and two voters. Their challenge ultimately landed before Judge Clark, who ruled Tuesday that Missouri should use the same congressional districts in the general election that voters used during the August primary.
That ruling created an extraordinary clash between state and federal courts.
With the election approaching rapidly, Missouri officials were suddenly facing conflicting judicial directives over which congressional boundaries should govern the November election.
The Supreme Court’s Thursday intervention temporarily resolves that immediate conflict by blocking the federal order requiring use of the 2025 map.
But the legal battle is far from finished.
Missouri’s election calendar is already under intense pressure. The state’s deadline for finalizing ballots passed Tuesday, and the first ballots are scheduled to be distributed beginning September 19.
That leaves election officials with very little time to determine exactly which congressional boundaries will appear on voters’ ballots.
Meanwhile, Hoskins is facing another legal challenge in Missouri.
The Missouri Supreme Court scheduled a Thursday hearing to consider whether the Republican secretary of state should be held in contempt over his handling of the court’s earlier order.
What began as a partisan fight over congressional boundaries has now become an extraordinary legal showdown involving Missouri’s highest court, a federal district judge, the U.S. Supreme Court and the state’s top election official.
For Missouri voters, the stakes are enormous. The final decision could determine whether the state enters the November midterms under its existing congressional map or eventually adopts the Republican-backed boundaries that could dramatically reshape the battle for control of Missouri’s House delegation.
