Missouri and a group of candidates and voters seeking to implement a new congressional map enacted in 2025 urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon to leave in place a ruling by a federal appeals court that directs the state to use that map, which was intended to give Republicans another seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, in the November elections. Missouri Solicitor General Louis Capozzi told the justices that if they were to pause that ruling, “voter and candidate confusion will persist, Missouri will endure a fifth court-ordered change to its map in September, hundreds of thousands of voters in the Primary Election will be disenfranchised, and candidates will be forced to run in new districts they have not campaigned in over the past year.”
The filing came less than 18 hours after the new map’s opponents, who have already prevailed twice before the court, urged the justices either to put Monday’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit on hold or to “clarify” that the Supreme Court’s Sept. 10 order pausing a similar ruling by a federal judge in Missouri remains in effect and bars the state from using the new map. (More background on the history of the dispute over the maps and the opponents’ filing on Tuesday night is available here.)
Both Missouri and the individual plaintiffs, led by Rep. Robert Onder, argued that the map’s opponents – the group People Not Politicians and its executive director, Richard von Glahn – lack a legal right, known as standing, to pursue their appeal. Cole Bradbury, the lawyer for the individual plaintiffs, wrote that People Not Politicians does not have the kind of special stake in enforcing the November referendum that will put the new map up for a vote. Missouri added that 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, reinforces the conclusion that the challengers do not have standing.
The individual plaintiffs also told the court that the challengers are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims – a key factor that courts consider when determining whether to grant temporary relief. The individual plaintiffs characterized the 8th Circuit’s decision as “narrow and unremarkable in scope.” The court of appeals, they said, “does not hold that voters have a right to any particular candidate, and it does not freeze Missouri’s map for future election cycles. It holds only that, having chosen to conduct its primary under the 2025 map, Missouri cannot switch to a different map for the general election that immediately follows.”
Finally, addressing the question whether it is too late to reinstate the 2025 map, the state told 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, Denny Hoskins (who is Missouri’s top election official), “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.”
