Congressional elections will be held in the district lines drawn in 2022, the court ruled. The court reversed the decision of Secretary of State Denny Hoskins that the referendum plan was not allowed under the state and federal constitutions.
By Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent | September 3, 2026 5:09 pm
Missourians will vote in November on the gerrymandered congressional map muscled through the Legislature in 2025, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday.
The court also ruled the congressional districts used in Missouri’s August primary cannot be used in the Nov. 3 general election.
The decision puts a congressional plan before voters for the first time since 1922 and affirms that the Missouri Constitution’s provision allowing voter-initiated referenda applies to redistricting plans as well as almost all other legislation.
The court’s decision comes five days before the deadline for adding measures to the Nov. 3 ballot.
“Because the plain language of… the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum as to ‘any act of the general assembly’ and no exception applies, the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely,” Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the unanimous opinion. “This court reverses the circuit court’s judgment.”
And to make sure Secretary of State Denny Hoskins understands what the decision means, the court added an order barring him from using the map for the Nov. 3 elections.
“The secretary and all of those acting in concert with him are restrained and enjoined from implementing, using, or mandating the use of the congressional redistricting (plan from 2025) for the November 2026 general election or at any other time thereafter unless and until (the act) is approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election and takes effect 30 days thereafter,” Gooch wrote.
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, reacting to the ruling, said in a news release she would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Our office will move immediately to seek relief from (the United States Supreme Court),” Hanaway said.. “We are confident that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised — which is what today’s decision does.”
Speaking to reporters after the ruling, attorney Chuck Hatfield, who argued the case for People Not Politicians, the political action committee behind the redistricting referendum campaign, said he sees little in the decision that would be grounds for the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.
“I think that that is a fool’s errand, given the strength of this opinion, particularly the notes that (the redistricting plan passed in 2025) is not and has never been the law,” Hatfield said.
In her decision, Gooch addresses the federal issue that will be the basis of the appeal — that the federal Constitution’s delegation of power to legislatures for congressional redistricting prohibits the referendum.
“A mere three years ago, the (U.S.) Supreme Court reaffirmed (a 1916 decision) and again rejected the argument the Elections Clause prohibits a state referendum as to legislation drawing new congressional districts,” Gooch wrote.
Road to referendum
The fight over Missouri’s congressional map has been unprecedented, both in the opposition generated by President Donald Trump’s demand that Republicans flip the 5th District in an effort to preserve the GOP’s thin majority in the U.S. House and the lengths Republicans have gone to protect the plan.
Trump weighed in again Thursday after the ruling, using social media to say “the Missouri Supreme Court just ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago.”
Trump said the gerrymandered map drawn at his direction should be used.
The NAACP of Missouri unsuccessfully challenged the power of Gov. Mike Kehoe to call a special session on redistricting and other plaintiffs sued, and lost, on the question of whether lawmakers had the power to draw a new congressional map absent a new census report.
When People Not Politicians delivered more than 300,000 signatures on Dec.9, two days before the new plan would become law, precedent from past referenda indicated Hoskins would declare the map suspended until the signatures could be verified.
Instead, Hoskins declared that the map would take effect because the signatures had not been verified. He was ultimately upheld in that decision, but the ruling, also written by Gooch, came with a warning — if he determined the referendum petition was going on the ballot, the legislation enacting the map would be suspended to the day the signatures were delivered.
Hoskins delayed his decision until the last possible day — Aug. 4, the same day as the primary — and declared the referendum unconstitutional.
The primary was held in the boundaries drawn by lawmakers in 2025. The court did not invalidate the results of that primary and the winners have been certified for the November ballot.
As late as Wednesday, after the court heard oral arguments in the case, Hoskins said he intended to run the November election in boundaries drawn in 2025.
Hoskins said at that time he would follow the order of the court but if it did not specify using the map used for the 2022 and 2024 elections, he would use the new map.
After the ruling, Hoskins issued a defiant statement that did not address whether he will follow the court order. Like Hanaway, he called it a “constitutional crisis.”
“We may have lost the battle today, but the war to preserve our constitutional republic is far from over,” Hoskins said.
To combat the referendum, Republicans hired firms to lure signature gatherers away and Hoskins sued Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, in federal court. The case made the same arguments used before the Missouri Supreme Court but was dismissed.
The signatures were gathered and submitted with two days to spare in the 90-day window allowed by the Constitution.
“We went through 90 days of, I would say, a very contentious campaign,” von Glahn told reporters Thursday afternoon. “We saw a lot of attacks, bribes, threats leveled against our team, and we persevered through it all.”
Hoskins always pointed to the state law giving him until Aug. 4 to determine whether the referendum would be on the ballot as the reason for taking until that date to do so. The petitions could have been checked by random sampling, but that would have resulted in a determination early this year, before candidate filing.
In arguments to the courts, Republicans contended that because candidates had filed, and the primary had been held, it was too late to revert to the previous map.
The ruling Thursday was the strongest possible message that the delay was useless, von Glahn said.
“The judges are fully aware that the secretary of state attempted to create chaos and confusion through delay, but delay does not change Missourians’ constitutional rights, and that’s what came down today,” he said.
While People Not Politicians gathered more than 300,000 signatures, Hoskins withheld from verification 107,000 that he said were gathered too early. In a third decision handed down Thursday, the court ruled that a lawsuit challenging Hoskins on the signatures was moot.
The referendum had enough signatures without the ones that were withheld, the court ruled, and if a future secretary of state repeats Hoskins’ action, it can be litigated then.
What’s next
The referendum will be listed on the ballot as Proposition A. The question voters will see is:
“Do the people of the state of Missouri approve the act of the General Assembly entitled ‘House Bill No. 1 (2025 Second Extraordinary Session),’ which repeals Missouri’s existing congressional plan, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more counties intact?”
A ‘Yes’ vote would enact the bill. A ‘No’ vote would reject it.
People Not Politicians will be pushing for a “No” vote.
The Missouri Republican Party, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee have been the main backers of Put Missouri First, the committee formed to oppose the referendum. It has raised $3 million so far.
The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which will back the referendum, issued a news release hailing the ruling.
“This victory is a testament to the tenacity of Missourians, who have shown the nation the power the people have to fight back when politicians attempt to undermine their right to vote,” said Eric Holder, former U.S. attorney general and chairman of the committee.
People Not Politicians raised $7 million through the end of June, spending $4.5 million of that on the signature campaign.
Neither campaign has received many large donations since their last disclosure report. That is likely to change in coming days but von Glahn said it will be grassroots efforts that will be the most important part of the campaign.
“We have thousands of volunteers that mobilized very quickly against very difficult odds in the fall around this, and guess what?” he said. “Those people have been following this, and those people are also angry about all of the delays and obstruction that we have seen here, and they’re very excited to go out and communicate with our communities about why voting ‘No’ is so important.”
Read the article here: https://missouriindependent.com/2026/09/03/missouri-supreme-court-blocks-gerrymandered-congressional-map-orders-referendum-vote/