Republican lawmakers approved the map during a special legislative session in 2025 as part of President Donald Trump’s national push for Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
In Missouri, the goal was to reshape Kansas City’s Democratic-held 5th District and give Republicans a better chance of winning a seventh of the state’s eight U.S. House seats.
People Not Politicians collected more than 300,000 signatures asking voters to decide whether the map should take effect.
Hoskins says they can’t. He argues Missouri’s Constitution doesn’t allow a referendum on congressional redistricting and that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures authority over congressional elections. A Cole County judge agreed.
But Supreme Court judges repeatedly pressed attorneys defending Hoskins on Wednesday to explain why Missourians shouldn’t be allowed to vote on the map.
Chief Justice W. Brent Powell also questioned Hoskins’ timing. His constitutional objection didn’t depend on counting signatures, Powell noted, meaning Hoskins could have made that determination well before the Aug. 4 primary.
The justices also questioned how Hoskins rejected the petition. His certification didn’t contain the constitutional analysis supporting his decision; instead, he attached an opinion from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway. Judge Zel Fischer questioned whether Hoskins had authority to incorporate another document into his certification that way.
The questioning doesn’t predict how the court will rule, but it shows the justices are examining not only whether congressional redistricting can be challenged by referendum, but also Hoskins’ authority and the process he used to stop the vote.
Which Map Would Missouri Use in November?
That’s where Hoskins’ delay creates another problem.
Missouri courts have previously ruled that once a referendum is found to have enough valid signatures, the challenged law cannot take effect until voters decide its fate.
But Hoskins didn’t make his decision until Aug. 4, allowing Missouri to hold its congressional primary that same day using the new map.
If the Supreme Court puts Proposition A on the ballot, Missouri could therefore face a November general election using the previous congressional districts after holding its primary under the new ones.
Six of Missouri’s eight districts changed under the 2025 map. Most significantly, Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin won the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in the redrawn 5th District. The new boundaries favor Republicans more than the previous district.
Cole County Judge Daniel Green called returning to the 2022 congressional map a remedy “impossible to implement.”
Two Missouri county clerks disagree.
Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon, a Democrat, and Polk County Clerk Rachel Lightfoot, a Republican, told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief that election officials can administer the Nov. 3 election using either map.
“You just pick which map you want us to use and we are ready for you,” Lennon told the Missouri Independent.
That doesn’t resolve what happens to candidates nominated under different district boundaries. Attorneys defending the new map argue that changing districts after the primary would create significant election and constitutional problems.
The court’s decision could therefore determine not only whether Missourians vote on the map but which districts they use to elect members of Congress in November.
The Other Case: Protecting Missouri’s Initiative Process
The second case, Claire Harris, et al. v. Denny Hoskins, grows out of a years-long battle between Missouri voters and lawmakers over citizen initiatives.
Missourians have used initiatives to expand Medicaid, legalize recreational marijuana, protect abortion rights, increase the minimum wage and require paid sick leave.
Lawmakers have sometimes resisted those decisions. They initially refused to fund voter-approved Medicaid expansion, repealed the paid sick leave requirement and have put a measure on this November’s ballot that would roll back the abortion-rights amendment voters approved in 2024. Republican lawmakers have also repeatedly tried to make it harder to amend the Constitution through citizen initiatives.
Amendment 6 is, in part, a response to that history. It would make it substantially harder for lawmakers to change measures enacted by voters, generally requiring 80% approval in both legislative chambers before proposed changes could go back to voters.
Respect MO Voters collected more than 330,000 signatures for the amendment.
Hoskins nevertheless declared it unconstitutional, saying it violates Missouri’s requirements that initiatives contain a single subject and amend only one article of the Constitution. Cole County Judge Daniel Green agreed.
But Wednesday’s arguments also focused on whether Hoskins had the authority to make that determination during final certification.
His office had previously approved the petition for circulation and prepared its official ballot title before supporters collected their signatures. Now the state argues the measure is unconstitutional and that the earlier ballot title was misleading.
Attorneys for Respect MO Voters argue constitutional challenges to the amendment should come after voters approve it, not be used by the secretary of state to prevent a vote in the first place.
That leaves the Supreme Court with another significant question: How much power does Missouri’s secretary of state have to stop an initiative that otherwise qualified for the ballot?
Now Missouri Waits
The arguments are over.
The Supreme Court has until Sept. 8 to determine whether Proposition A and Amendment 6 make the Nov. 3 ballot.
The decisions will settle the immediate fate of two citizen petitions that collected enough valid signatures to qualify.
But they could do considerably more — determining which congressional map Missouri uses in November and defining how much authority a secretary of state has to stand between Missouri voters and the initiative process.
