For the third time in less than a month, the Supreme Court on Friday declined to allow Missouri to use a new congressional map, intended to benefit Republicans, in 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 new map.
In Friday’s opinion, which was released to reporters shortly before 6 p.m. EDT, the court emphasized that the federal district and appeals courts “should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the” map enacted in 2022, which is currently in use in voting already underway, “in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.” Moreover, the court added, those courts “should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the” new map “in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”
There were no public dissents from the Supreme Court’s opinion.
The dispute began in September 2025, when Missouri adopted a new map that was intended to give Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. On Dec. 9, opponents of the state’s new map – including the group People Not Politicians and its executive director, Richard von Glahn – submitted more than 300,000 signatures in support of a petition to put the new map up for a vote on the ballot in the November 2026 general election. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, Missouri’s top election official, rejected the petition on Aug. 4, 2026 – the last day to do so – and the state conducted its August primary with the new map.
Von Glahn then went to state court, asking it to reverse Hoskins’ decision and prohibit Missouri from using the new map in the November elections. In a unanimous decision on Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court did just that. Under the Missouri Constitution, it held, the referendum petition “was legal, sufficient, and timely.” As a result, that court said, the new map never went into effect and will not do so “unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election.”
The dispute made its first trip to the Supreme Court on Sept. 4, when Hoskins asked the justices to put the state supreme court’s ruling on hold. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has initial responsibility for emergency appeals from the geographic area that includes Missouri, denied Hoskins’ request four days later without referring it to the full court.
Also on Sept. 4, Rep. Robert Onder, a Republican who won the Republican nomination for the state’s 3rd congressional district in the August 2026 primary, as well as another congressional candidate and two individual voters, filed a lawsuit in federal court in St. Louis, seeking to revive the 2025 map. Onder and the other candidate – Richard Brattin, who won the Republican nomination for the state’s 5th congressional district in August – contended that if the state were to use the previous map, from 2022, in the November elections, their districts would be significantly different from the districts in which they won the nominations in the August primary elections. The individual voters similarly argued that they would vote in a different district in November under the 2022 map than they had in August.
Shortly after Kavanaugh turned down Hoskins’ request to pause the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued an order that directed the state to use the 2025 map. Clark wrote that although “[c]onducting state elections in accordance with the Missouri Constitution undoubtedly qualifies as an important interest,” Onder and the other plaintiffs would “face irreparable harm” without a temporary restraining order “because many Missouri voters would have to cast their general-election votes for candidates whom they had no role in nominating.”
The dispute arrived at the Supreme Court for the second time on Sept. 9, when von Glahn and People Not Politicians asked the justices to intervene and pause the district court’s order. The next day, within minutes after Hoskins filed his brief opposing a stay of Clark’s order, the Supreme Court – in a brief, unsigned order – did so, putting Clark’s order on hold “pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court, if such a writ is timely sought.”
The dispute then returned to the lower courts, where the 8th Circuit expedited the appeal by von Glahn and People Not Politicians. That court heard oral arguments on Sept. 17 and issued a decision upholding Clark’s order on Sept. 21. The court of appeals also directed Clark to enter a permanent order requiring the state to use the 2025 map, but also to put that order on hold until 5 p.m. CDT on Sept. 28 to give the Supreme Court time to weigh in.
People Not Politicians and von Glahn came back to the Supreme Court – the dispute’s third trip there –on Sept. 22. They asked the justices either to “clarify” that the court’s Sept. 10 order pausing Clark’s order “means what it says” or, alternatively, put the 8th Circuit’s Monday ruling on hold. The court should do so, they argued, because the Supreme Court’s orders “are not invitations for a lower court to repackage the same relief and try again.” It is too late, they continued, to revive the 2025 map, because the state has already sent out ballots to military and overseas voters, and Sept. 22 was the deadline for election officials to “print and make available absentee ballots.”
Missouri and the individual plaintiffs supporting the 2025 map countered that People Not Politicians and von Glahn do not have a legal right, known as standing, to pursue their appeal. Among other things, Missouri pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, holding that the proponents of a California initiative to ban same-sex marriage lacked standing to defend the law’s constitutionality when the state declined to do so.
The state also pushed back against any suggestion that it is too late to reinstate the 2025 map, telling the justices that “[t]he honest truth is that the chaos injected by the Missouri Supreme Court,” which barred the state from using the 2025 map, “will remain no matter what this Court does.” “More than anything,” the state continued, “Missouri voters need stability. The Secretary [of State] respectfully believes that denying a stay—and declining to change Missouri’s congressional map for a fifth time—is the best way to promote stability.”
In its opinion on Friday granting the request from People Not Politicians and von Glahn, the court began by observing that, “as a matter of state law, the 2022 map—not the 2025 map—must be used in the 2026 congressional election.” Moreover, the court added, putting the lower courts’ most recent rulings on hold is “[c]onsistent with” the Supreme Court’s Sept. 10 order pausing Clark’s earlier decision.
But “[e]ven putting this Court’s prior orders aside,” the court continued, the lower-court rulings should also be paused because “[t]he election is not merely upcoming; it has already started.” “At this late date,” the court wrote, reverting to the 2025 map “would usher in electoral chaos.”
The court also stressed that the 8th Circuit was wrong in suggesting that using the 2025 map would be most consistent with the Purcell principle – the idea that courts should not change election rules too close to an election – because the Missouri Supreme Court was responsible for upsetting the status quo. Federal courts, the justices said, should not interfere with elections at the last minute, but states can generally make their own decisions. And here, the court emphasized, the Missouri Supreme Court was not responsible for disturbing the status quo, because it had indicated in May 2026 that “if the referendum petition was legally sufficient,” then the 2025 map would only go into effect after it had been approved by the voters.
