U.S. Supreme Court
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Missouri organizer has urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that prevents the state from using a new congressional map that could give Republicans an additional U.S. House seat in the November elections.
Richard von Glahn, an organizer of a referendum effort targeting the map, told the justices that Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ request for emergency intervention “does not present a real emergency.”
The dispute concerns HB 1, a congressional map passed by the Missouri Legislature and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe.
If the map were used, Republicans would hold seven of Missouri’s eight seats in the U.S. House. The legislation came after President Donald Trump encouraged states with Republican legislatures to draw new maps outside the usual decennial redistricting cycle.
Organizers seeking to put the map before Missouri voters submitted more than 300,000 signatures in December in support of a statewide referendum on the 2026 ballot.
Hoskins rejected the petition August 4, the final day for his certification decision and the day of Missouri’s primary election. He concluded that the Missouri Constitution “does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly.”
Von Glahn went to state court the same day, seeking to overturn Hoskins’ decision and block the state from using the new map.
On September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously granted that request. The court said the plain language of the state constitution authorizes a referendum on “any act of the general assembly” and that no exception applies.
It found the petition legal, sufficient and timely, and concluded that HB 1 never took effect and will not take effect unless voters approve it in the November 2026 general election.
The state court also rejected Hoskins’ contention that failing to use the map would cause confusion, expense and practical difficulties. Those concerns, the court wrote, were irrelevant to Hoskins’ stated basis for rejecting the petition and were especially misplaced in light of the delay created by the secretary.
Hoskins then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, saying Missouri was genuinely unsure whether it could change its governing congressional map in time to conduct a timely federal election.
He argued that the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision violates the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, which he said assigns state legislatures, rather than voters who sign referendum petitions, the authority to prescribe the times, places and manner of federal elections.
The Supreme Court, he argued, has never held that 3.3% of a state’s voters can suspend a congressional map merely by submitting a referendum petition.
Hoskins also argued that the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling unconstitutionally disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters by placing them in new districts where they would be required to vote for general-election candidates they had no role in choosing during the primary process.
In his response, von Glahn argued that the Supreme Court lacks authority to decide the case because the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling rests solely on state law, creating what is known as an adequate and independent state-law bar to federal review.
The Missouri court, he said, had indicated that Hoskins could not rely on federal-law arguments because he did not make them when initially rejecting the petition.
Von Glahn further argued that pausing the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling would not give Hoskins the relief he seeks because HB 1 never went into effect. Under Missouri law, he wrote, the 2022 map is the legal status quo, not HB 1.
To use the new map for the upcoming election, he said, Hoskins would need an injunction affirmatively establishing authority to use it, a remedy that requires meeting a higher standard.
Von Glahn also contended that neither Hoskins nor the Republican groups supporting him have standing to claim that the Missouri Supreme Court displaced authority assigned to the legislature by the elections clause.
Even if the justices reach the merits, he argued, Hoskins’ theory conflicts with more than a century of precedent recognizing that state constitutional referendum procedures can constrain congressional-redistricting legislation.
Hoskins, von Glahn wrote, is asking the court to recognize a right that no precedent provides: a guarantee that every consequence of a primary vote be preserved through November.
U.S. Supreme Court case number: 26A304
