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Election officials in Missouri are now planning to send out midterm ballots to voters for their old Congressional districts, after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in the state's long-running court battle over a new map used in primaries last month.
Earlier Thursday, the High Court granted an emergency appeal blocking the Republican-backed 2025 redistricting map that would reshape the state's eight House districts, just two days after Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined to hear an appeal from state officials.
The case, centered on the replacement for the 2022 map, has passed through multiple courts, including the Missouri Supreme Court, leaving officials uncertain which map they would use for the November election.
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"When we saw that the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal of the Supreme Court of Missouri's directive, we were good for about 10 minutes," Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon told Newsweek Thursday afternoon, referring to the near immediate follow-up to Kavanaugh's denial from the Eastern District of Missouri ordering the new map be used.
"So, we knew that there would be a number of appeals and everyone at that point, I think, really kind of found themselves in a position of just waiting," Lennon said. "There was no reason to create ballots that we would have to redo. So we were cautiously optimistic that we would get some sort of resolution from the courts before we would have to create ballots to be sent out to our military and overseas voters, which is next week, September 18th."
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The Supreme Court's actions led experts Newsweek spoke to to one conclusion about the debate: the midterms would use the 2022 map.
"This case is now effectively over," Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School, told Newsweek following the case. "The Supreme Court’s stay puts the 2022 map back on the ballot (as it should have been) for the fall elections."
"Good for the Court!" Vikram Amar, Daniel J. Dykstra endowed chair and distinguished professor of law at UC Davis School of Law, told Newsweek following the ruling.
Newsweek reached out to Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins for comment Thursday morning.
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Missouri’s Midterm Map Fight: How the Chaos Unfolded
The second appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court over the issue came from the new map's challengers, People Not Politicians, a group that sought a referendum on the plan.
In a statement shared with Newsweek Thursday, Richard von Glahn, executive director of the group, said, "The law is the law, the Missouri constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court. Over 305,000 Missouri voters—Republicans, Democrats and Independents took action to block this political power grab last fall. People, not politicians, will have the final say when they vote NO on Proposition A this November."
Supreme Court Prevents Use of Redistricting Maps in Midterms: What We Know
The Supreme Court's decision to hear the case and grant a stay came Thursday morning, hours before Hoskins was due to appear in state court over allegations of contempt.
People Not Politicians, which successfully challenged Missouri's 2025 congressional map in state court, argued that the federal district court improperly overrode the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling that a referendum petition suspended the map.
The group told the Supreme Court that Missouri election officials should follow state law and use the older 2022 map in November, arguing that neither the Equal Protection Clause nor Article I, Section 2 guarantees voters the right to remain in the same congressional district for both primary and general elections.
It also said the federal court's order created election chaos by requiring use of a map that Missouri's highest court had ruled "is not the law and never has been the law."
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Hoskins and the state, meanwhile, had argued that switching back to the 2022 map after the August primary would violate the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of voters.
They said many Missourians would be forced to vote in the general election for candidates they had no opportunity to help nominate in the primary, while election officials were already printing ballots under the 2025 map.
The United States, supporting Missouri, made similar arguments and said changing maps between the primary and general election would create "two classes of voters" because some voters would remain in the same district while others would be moved into different ones, depriving them of a full role in choosing the member of Congress who will represent them.
The Justice Department also argued that People Not Politicians likely lacked standing to pursue the appeal.
Later Thursday, the Missouri Supreme Court found Hoskins in contempt when he failed to comply with its redistricting ruling. He then ordered election officials to use the old map.
"Following the United States Supreme Court’s stay, the only governing court order in effect is from the Missouri Supreme Court," Hoskins said in a brief statement shared online. "In accordance with that order, my Office is directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map."
New Missouri Redistricting Map Explained
The debate centers on whether Missouri should use its 2022 congressional map or the districts Republicans redrew last year. The newer map could give the GOP seven of Missouri’s eight House seats, rather than six, and was used in the August primaries.
The Missouri legislature approved House Bill 1 in September 2025, replacing the congressional map the state had enacted in 2022. The measure passed comfortably in both chambers before Republican Governor Michael Kehoe signed it into law. Missouri then used the new map during its August 2026 primary elections, in which approximately 1.2 million voters cast ballots.
On September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the referendum was valid and said the petition suspended HB 1, ordering state officials to return to the state's previous 2022 congressional map for the November election.
The following day, a group of congressional candidates and voters sued in federal court, arguing that switching maps after the primary would violate the constitutional rights of voters who had already nominated candidates under the HB 1 districts. A federal judge agreed and temporarily blocked Missouri from abandoning the 2025 map.
After the Eighth Circuit declined to intervene, People Not Politicians asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.
Missouri Officials Prepare for the Midterms
In Boone County, a Democratic-leaning area of roughly 190,000 residents that backed Kamala Harris over President Donald Trump by about 54 percent to 44 percent in the 2024 presidential election, efforts are now underway in earnest to prepare for November 3.
Lennon told Newsweek that the back-and-forth over the maps had given her runway to prepare for either outcome.
"We knew that it would be a kind of last-minute decision about what ballots we were going to be using because of all of these court cases, but we had to deal with this in August when we were preparing for the primary, so it's not like this is the first time it's happened this year," she said.
"Which, unfortunately, makes it so that we have some practice with having to do this in a rushed manner. But it gave us some practice and, that way, I feel confident that we can get ballots in the hands of voters and they can feel confident in making their voice heard."
Lennon said she had her team create the new database for the 2025 districts, while keeping the 2022 files on hand in case, telling Newsweek, "it is simply a switch that we need to know which way to flip it."
What Happens Next
The Supreme Court's order is temporary and does not fully resolve the underlying dispute over the congressional map Missouri must use in the future.
The justices granted a stay of the federal district court's restraining order while they consider the appeal brought by People Not Politicians, meaning Missouri cannot currently rely on the lower court's directive to use the 2025 HB 1 map.
Levitt told Newsweek that he believed the stay would remain through the midterm election.
"In the fall, voters will vote on HB1, the mid-decade gerrymander," he said. "If the voters approve it, it will govern congressional elections going forward after 2026. If the voters reject it, it’s dead.
"Either way, there’s no federal case remaining—the premise of the federal case was entirely based on a general election under different lines than the primary-and so that case will be moot after the 2026 elections, at which point the Supreme Court case will disappear."
Whether the court decides to let the case peter out or if a formal hearing will be scheduled remains to be seen. For now, the 2022 map takes over for the midterms.
For Lennon, she believes the case has at least led to higher voter engagement, with voters now set to have a say on the map as well as a number of state Constitutional amendments.
"I think people were already set to be engaged in this election and now that they're getting a full view behind the curtain of what goes into making an election successful," she said. "I think it's really been beneficial for voter education."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sam Wilson, Gray R. Thomas.
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