JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously blocked a Republican-drawn congressional map that President Trump had championed, ordering the disputed districts onto November's ballot as a statewide referendum and restoring the state's prior lines for the midterm elections two months away.
The ruling likely returns to Democrats a Kansas City-area House seat that the redrawn map was designed to flip to Republicans, and it thrusts Missouri's Sept. 8 ballot-finalization deadline into limbo. It sets up a fast-tracked appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on whether a state can revert to old congressional districts between a primary and a general election.
What the court said
Writing for the seven-member court — five of whom were Republican-appointed — Judge Ginger K. Gooch enjoined Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using the 2025 map "for the November 2026 general election or at any other time thereafter" unless voters approve it first. "The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise," the court wrote.
The decision hinged on a provision of the Missouri Constitution allowing a referendum on "any act" of the legislature. Hoskins had rejected the petition on August 4, the day of the party primaries, arguing that redistricting laws fell outside the process. A lower court agreed; the state Supreme Court did not.
The 5th District
Missouri's revised 5th Congressional District, held by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, had been stretched more than 100 miles eastward to absorb rural Republican areas. About 59 percent of its voters were new under the revised lines, according to an Associated Press estimate, and the redrawn district would have carried Trump by more than 17 points in 2024. Cleaver won his existing seat by nearly 24 points that year.
State Sen. Rick Brattin, a founding member of the Missouri Freedom Caucus in the state Legislature, won the August GOP primary in the reshaped district. He will now face Cleaver in a Kansas City-based seat that skews heavily Democratic.
Gov. Mike Kehoe called the special session that produced the map last year after Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw ahead of the midterms. Some 10 states did so; most tilted Republican, and California, in response, redrew to favor Democrats. Missouri opponents gathered more than 305,000 signatures in December to force the veto referendum.
Trump and the appeal
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said her office would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling the decision a "full-fledged constitutional crisis" and writing that "Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election." Trump, on Truth Social, called the ruling "horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional" and said Missouri "must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary."
Republican attorneys had argued that reverting to the old lines this close to November would cause voter confusion, and the Republican National Committee said it was "evaluating every option" to challenge the ruling.
The last time Missouri voters were asked to weigh in on a congressional map by referendum was 1922. They rejected it, and the question returns to the ballot in November.