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Supreme Court halts order
September 11, 2026
The Supreme Court suspended a federal judge's directive requiring Missouri to run its elections under district lines the legislature approved in September 2025.
Missouri's Republican legislature enacted new congressional maps in September 2025. The state constitution lets opponents of a new law put it on hold by collecting enough signatures to trigger a ballot referendum.
Key facts
- Hoskins's delay pushed the referendum question back, so a ruling from Missouri's highest state court came only on September 3, and it held that his rejection of the petitions had been wrong.
- Republican lawmakers in the state put the new maps into law in September of 2025, part of a wider party push to redraw red-state lines and hand the GOP an advantage at the midterms ahead.
- Taken more broadly, the fight over the Missouri gerrymander offers Democrats, and others who back liberal democracy, some reassurance that this Court does not answer entirely to President Donald Trump or to his Republican Party.
- Ian Millhiser writes for Vox as a senior correspondent, with a beat built around the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and how democratic institutions in this country are eroding.
- Only minutes passed before a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump handed down a fresh order that would have required the state to use the Republican Party's maps regardless.
Vox reports the Supreme Court's order in People Not Politicians v. Onder places on hold a decision by a Trump-appointed federal judge that would have forced Missouri to use the Republican Party's congressional maps. That judge acted minutes after Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied a similar request from another set of Republican litigants earlier in the week. Vox reports the justices answered with a brief order less than half an hour later, that no justice indicated a dissent, and that the order appears unanimous.
AP News reports Missouri is poised to revert to its former congressional districts after the court rejected the Trump-backed map. The New York Times reports the justices again blocked the Republican-backed Missouri voting map. The accounts corroborate each other on the result: the map the legislature enacted in September 2025, part of a wider Republican effort to redraw red states before the midterm elections, is blocked, and the former districts are in line to apply.
Vox reports the fight reached this point through the state's referendum process. Opponents of the new maps submitted petitions in December of 2025; Missouri's Republican secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, sat on them for months and rejected them on August 4, 2026, the last date state law permits and the same day Missouri held its congressional primaries. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled on September 3 that Hoskins was wrong to reject the petitions, and it answered his complaint about confusion, expense, and practical difficulty by pointing to his own delay as the cause. What the accounts settle is the immediate one: the federal order is on hold and the petitions stand.
Still developing
The justices have several other election cases pending, including one that reaches voting by mail in many US states, and those arguments await decision. Missouri voters have not yet acted on the referendum the petitions trigger, and Missouri's constitution holds the new maps out of effect unless voters approve them at the next election.