Supreme Court orders Missouri to use 2022 congressional map for Nov. 3 election

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Missouri to use its 2022 congressional map for the Nov. 3 general election, blocking lower federal court rulings that would have required the state to switch to a newer 2025 map that was used in the August primary.

In a brief unsigned order issued Sept. 25 in People Not Politicians v. Onder, No. 26A388, the justices said federal courts “should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map” and “should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map” for this year’s congressional election.

The immediate consequence is practical: Missouri’s general election for U.S. House seats will now proceed under the older district lines, even though the Aug. 4 primary was conducted under the 2025 map, also known as HB 1. The Supreme Court said changing course again would create disruption because the election is already underway.

“The Purcell principle applies with even greater force here,” the court wrote, referring to the doctrine warning courts against changing election rules too close to voting. “The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed. Absentee voting has already begun, as has military and overseas voting.”

The dispute grew out of an unusual collision between Missouri’s referendum process and federal court concerns about election timing. Missouri lawmakers passed HB 1 in 2025 to redraw the state’s congressional districts in the middle of the decade. Opponents, a group called People Not Politicians, filed a referendum petition with Secretary of State Denny Hoskins on Dec. 9, 2025, seeking to block the new map before it could take effect.

Even so, Missouri used the 2025 map for its Aug. 4 primary, in which the Eighth Circuit said more than 1.2 million Missourians voted.

Then, on Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled en banc in von Glahn v. Hoskins that the referendum petition was legal, sufficient and timely, and ordered the referendum onto the Nov. 3 ballot. The state high court also said HB 1 was suspended unless voters approve it, declaring that “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law.”

Federal courts then reached the opposite conclusion about what map should govern the general election. On Sept. 8, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark barred Missouri from using any map other than HB 1. On Sept. 21, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that using the 2022 map in November would violate the U.S. Constitution and directed the district court to require use of the 2025 map.

The Supreme Court’s Sept. 25 order put those lower-court rulings on hold for this election.

The map fight also carried clear political stakes. Under the 2022 map, Missouri’s U.S. House delegation stood at six Republicans and two Democrats. The 2025 redraw was widely expected to improve Republicans’ chances of gaining another seat, especially by reshaping Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, the Kansas City-based district represented by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Analysts said the new lines could have made a 7-1 Republican split plausible if Republicans captured the reworked district.

The Eighth Circuit described the change this way: “The most prominent changes in the 2025 map related to Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, which Missouri lawmakers expected to benefit Republicans.”

The Supreme Court did not resolve every underlying legal question about the maps. Its order was focused on what should happen for the 2026 election now that voting preparations are already in motion. The court’s directive was explicit: “The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri. And the District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri. It is so ordered.”

For Missouri voters and election officials, that means the primary winners were chosen under one set of congressional boundaries, but the Nov. 3 general election will be conducted under the older 2022 districts because the nation’s highest court said the election had already begun.