The Missouri state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously put the state’s gerrymandered congressional map on hold until voters can vote on whether to keep or repeal it. Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the redistricting plan not quite a year ago, after Donald Trump demanded red states rig electoral maps, because why even bother with representative democracy if people might vote for Democrats?
The Missouri state Supreme Court is dominated 5-2 by Republican appointees over Democratic ones, so that’s an even nicer Nice Time, when you account for Republicans not being disgusting partisan hacks!
At the time, Republicans already held six of the state’s eight congressional seats, but Trump doesn’t want to be impeached, so Missouri Republicans happily pitched in. Redistricting wouldn’t just potentially add one more seat in the “R” column in the House, it also would give Republicans a shot at ending the career of Democratic Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, who has served his Kansas City-area district since 2005, and prior to running for Congress, had been the city’s first Black mayor.
The new map neatly chopped up Cleaver’s district and divided the city’s Black population up among three newly drawn districts with white rural majorities in a classic vote-dilution maneuver. Cleaver ran unopposed for the Democratic primary in his newly redrawn Fifth Congressional District in August, but the new map tilted heavily Republican. If the state Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling survives an expected challenge before the US Supremes, Cleaver is likely to win reelection easily.
We naively noted last year that Missouri’s deliberate dilution of minority representation would be a “pretty explicit violation of what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.” But then this year the US Supreme Court gutted that too, and ain’t life just a big rollercoaster of grim bitter irony?
Fortunately, the recent Jim Crow 2.0 fuckery by the Roberts Court won’t enter into the current case in Missouri. Thursday’s decision by the Missouri SCOTUS (we will never tire of that joke) had to undo a completely different flavor of Republican votefuckery, as it turns out. Those grubby little guys are endlessly creative when it comes to tilting elections in their favor.
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This time out, the legal fight centered around a skeevy interpretation of Missouri law by state Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R), who decided all on his own that Missouri voters don’t have the right to put the gerrymander to a vote. It may be misruled by Trumpy critters now, but Missourians also have a long history of using the referendum process to roll back terrible ideas foisted on them by Republicans. After the US Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade, voters passed a 2024 constitutional amendment to protect the right to abortion — although Republicans promptly got to work trying to undermine it, which is why you gotta pass the referendum and not elect Republicans.
Last fall, right after the Lege passed the redistricting scheme, a petition drive got underway to call a referendum to repeal it. The group that formed to oppose the gerrymander, People Not Politicians, collected more than 300,000 signatures by December 9, more than enough to force an election.
Normally, that should have immediately put the redistricting on hold, just like other laws subject to being undone by referendum. But instead of certifying the signatures, Hoskins held off doing anything until almost literally the last minute allowed by state law: just a bit before 5 p.m. on August 4, the day before the primary election. He then proclaimed the petition drive unconstitutional, insisting that because the Constitution’s Elections Clause gives state legislatures the power to draw congressional districts, voters can’t muck up the boundaries with their filthy little referendum petitions.
The Missouri Supreme Court wasn’t having any of that nonsense — and was unanimous in not having it. Judge Ginger Gooch (really!) wrote in her opinion that
Because the plain language of […] the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum as to “any act of the general assembly” and no exception applies, the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely. This court reverses the circuit court’s judgment.
Gooch ordered that the referendum must be placed on the November ballot, and underlined her point for Hoskins: The general election must be held using the district lines on the pre-fuckery map, do not pass GO, do not try to turf out Emanuel Cleaver, and do not collect a new Republican seat in the House of Representatives.
With characteristic Republican doublespeak, state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway promised to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, saying she was confident the federal courts “will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised.”
Let that sink in a moment: Missouri voters mustn’t be allowed to vote on whether to keep or reject the map imposed on them by their elected representatives, who know what the voters really want. Democracy is too important to be left to the demos.
Gooch’s decision also outlined the argument the referendum’s defenders will likely use if the real SCOTUS takes up the case. She pointed out that the US Supreme Court “has held on multiple occasions that the United States Constitution permits a state to authorize a state referendum as to legislation drawing new congressional districts.”
She added that just three years ago the Roberts Court reaffirmed a 1916 decision that rejected the very same argument being made by Hoskins today. The claim that the Elections Clause prohibits a referendum on redistricting was “plainly without substance” in 1916, Gooch noted, and it’s weak sad poop today.
On his fake Twitter substitute, Trump groused that the Missouri Supremes had “ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago” — you know, before September 2025 — and wailed that “The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America!” Yeah, by him and his allies, so fuck them.
This still isn’t over, because it’s entirely possible that Roberts and his pals will decide that it’s too close to the election for the unfucked map to be used — while Louisiana redistricted literally after voting had already begun — so the voters of Missouri will just have to live with the rigged version Trump demanded. What a country!
[Missouri Independent / AP / Missouri Supreme Court]
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WHY HAS GAWD FORSAKEN THE STATE OF MISERY??!?!?
I really so love that in so-called red states like Kansas and Missouri, even they say "Nope, fuck that, thank you very much" when the Repubs try to take away their rights.
Kansas women said "We want abortion." Missouri said, "Fuck it, give errybody vote."
That's the spirit!