Yahoo · September 7, 2026
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins sought Supreme Court intervention, arguing that the state supreme court's decision violated the U.S. Constitution's elections clause and disenfranchised voters, but the plaintiff argued that the Supreme Court lacks the power to intervene based on state law.
A Missouri man on Monday urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court that bars the state from using a new congressional map that could give Republicans an additional seat in the upcoming November elections. Richard von Glahn, one of the organizers of a referendum that would put the new map up for a vote on November's ballot, told the justices that the case "does not present a real emergency."
The dispute began last year, when the Missouri Legislature passed - and Gov. Mike Kehoe signed - the new map, known as HB 1. If successful, Republicans would hold seven of the state's eight seats in the U.S. House. The move came after President Donald Trump encouraged states with Republican legislatures to draw new maps outside of the normal decennial redistricting cycle.
In December, organizers submitted more than 300,000 signatures in support of a petition to put a statewide referendum on the new maps on Missouri's 2026 ballot. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition on Aug. 4, 2026, the last day on which he could make his certification decision and the day of the state's primary election. In his view, Missouri's constitution "does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly."
On the same day that Hoskins denied the petition, von Glahn went to state court, seeking to reverse Hoskins' decision and prohibit the state from using the new map. The Missouri Supreme Court granted that request on Sept. 3. In a unanimous ruling, the state supreme court explained that "the plain language of ... the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum as to 'any act of the general assembly' and no exception applies." As a result, the court concluded, the referendum petition "was legal, sufficient, and timely." Therefore, the court continued, "HB 1 never took effect" and will not go into effect "unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election."
The state supreme court deemed "wholly unpersuasive" Hoskins' argument that the failure to use the new congressional map would create "confusion, expense, and practical difficulties." "Besides being irrelevant to the secretary's sole basis for declaring the referendum petition insufficient," the Missouri Supreme Court wrote, "these arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary's delay created" the problems about which he is now complaining.
Telling the justices that Missouri was "genuinely unsure whether it can switch its governing congressional map in time to run a timely federal election," Hoskins came to the Supreme Court on Friday night, asking the justices to step in. He argued first that the state supreme court's decision violates the U.S. Constitution's elections clause. That provision, he said, gives state legislatures - rather than the voters who sign a petition - the power to prescribe the "Times, Places, and Manner" of federal elections. The Supreme Court, he said, "has never held that just 3.3% of a State's voters can unilaterally suspend a disfavored congressional map by submitting a referendum petition."
The Missouri Supreme Court's ruling, Hoskins continued, also unconstitutionally disenfranchised "hundreds of thousands" of voters by putting them in new districts, where they will be "forced to vote on General Election candidates they had no role in choosing."
In his response on Monday, von Glahn told the justices that the Supreme Court lacks the power to weigh in because the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling had rested only on state law - known as an "adequate and independent state-law" bar to Supreme Court review. The Missouri Supreme Court indicated that Hoskins could not make his arguments based on federal law because he had not originally made them in rejecting von Glahn's petition.
A stay of the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling also would not actually provide the relief that Hoskins seeks, von Glahn continued, because HB 1 never went into effect. "In short," von Glahn reasoned, "under Missouri law, the 2022 Plan is the legal status quo, not HB 1." If Hoskins want to be able to use HB 1 in the upcoming election, von Glahn said, he needs an injunction - "an order affirmatively establishing [his] authority to use it," which requires him to meet a much higher bar.
Von Glahn also argued that neither Hoskins nor the Republican groups that joined the case to support him have a legal right, known as standing, to bring a lawsuit contending "that the Missouri Supreme Court unlawfully displaced authority the Elections Clause assigns to the state legislature."
But in any event, von Glahn concluded, Hoskins' arguments fail on the merits. His "Elections Clause theory runs headlong into more than a century of precedent recognizing that state constitutional referendum procedures may constrain congressional-redistricting legislation." And Hoskins, he said, "ask[s] this Court to recognize a right no precedent confers: a guarantee to preserve every consequence of a primary vote through November."