The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a directive for Missouri Republicans to use their favored congressional map, again, making clear to officials they must return to an old design for November after the state’s messy redistricting battle. The decision is a blow for the GOP, which fought to use a more favorable 7-1 House map...
Page A3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 25 September 2026
THIRD TIME
Supreme Court blocks Missouri GOP map for third time this year, cites its own first two rulings as the surprise
As it ran on the front
By Sal
The Supreme Court blocked Missouri's Republican-drawn congressional map on Friday. That's the sentence you'd write if you only read one wire story. Read five, going back to September 5th, and it's not one sentence — it's a loop, and the loop is the story.…
…(cont) It starts with a request. Kavanaugh declined the application on September 8th. Strike one.
On September 10th, the Supreme Court said no again, deferring to the state court's finding that a map like this one — replacing lines the legislature had already enacted in 2022 — needs voter approval first. Missouri's own constitution requires a referendum once enough petition signatures land. Enough signatures landed.
That should have ended it. Instead, on September 23rd — eighteen days after the first ask — a federal appeals court revived the 2025 map anyway, and the fight went back to Washington for a third trip. Activists filed to end the mess. Republicans filed to keep the map alive. Same court, same map, filed the same way a third time.
Friday, the third order came down, unsigned, citing its own two prior orders as though the outcome should come as no surprise. It didn't.
A map that loses three separate rulings inside eighteen days is not a drafting error, it is a filing strategy: lose, appeal, lose, appeal, and bet that the election calendar closes before the losses do. This time the calendar won it — the Show-Me State shows the same seven-to-one House map it tried three times cannot survive a single referendum requirement in its own constitution. The 2022 lines stand because nothing newer could clear the bar voters set. Somebody paid outside counsel to file that application on September 5th, to argue it again on the 10th, to run it up to an appeals court and back down by the 23rd. Ask whose money that was, and ask what else it could have paid for — a school levy, a Medicaid claim, a raise for the poll workers who now have to explain, twice in one cycle, which district a voter actually lives in.
That's the whole trick of a rigged map: you don't need it to survive the Supreme Court. You just need it to survive long enough that somebody, somewhere, votes under it before anyone notices it was never legal to begin with.
“They filed the same losing paper three times in eighteen days and called the third rejection a surprise ending — that's not a legal strategy, that's a stall tactic with a filing fee. Every one of those filings cost money, and it wasn't coming out of any state legislator's own pocket. Whoever's funding that law firm wanted one thing: a map running the election before a court could stop it, and they almost got it.”
“Look, the legislature had every right to update its lines after 2022 — that's just modernizing the map, nothing sinister about it. Did the Missouri Constitution require voter approval and did we lose that argument three separate times? I mean, technically, yes, but "three times" makes it sound like a pattern, and it's really just — okay, it's a pattern. Forget I said that.”
The receipts
The Supreme Court halted an appeals court’s ruling reinstating a GOP-friendly congressional map in Missouri, clearing the way for the map from the 2022 and 2024 elections to be used for the November election and likely preventing any House pickups for the Republican Party in the state. The high court affirmed that the Missouri…
The ruling ends a complicated legal fight that has injected uncertainty into November’s midterm elections in the state.
WASHINGTON — For the third time, the Supreme Court on Friday shut down efforts by Missouri Republicans to use a new congressional map in the midterm elections that are already underway.
The ruling preserves the status quo and a 2022 election map.
The Supreme Court said in an unsigned decision that ordering Missouri to restore its 2025 map "would usher in electoral chaos."
The fight over Missouri's congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Trump.
A federal appeals court had sided with Republicans seeking to use redrawn congressional district boundaries to give their party an advantage in the midterms elections.
Activists in Missouri asked the Supreme Court to end the messy legal saga over which congressional map the Show-Me State will use in November, with the high court being asked to weigh in on the redistricting fight for the third time this month. The current confusion began late last month when the Missouri Supreme Court […]
The Supreme Court ordered Missouri Friday to use its 2022 congressional map for the 2026 election, blocking use of the state's newer 2025 map.
The ruling is a defeat for Republicans seeking to give their party an edge in the midterm elections for control of the House. It means voters will face a different map than the one used in the primary elections.
'Given this Court’s two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise,' the high court ruled.
Although the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Friday greenlit President Donald Trump's voter purge database, it also helped deliver yet another blow to Missouri Republicans' push for a rigged congressional map. "In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a redistricting map for elections to the US House of Representatives.…
The Supreme Court rejected a Trump-backed Missouri congressional map, ensuring the state will use its 2022 districts for the midterm elections.
· Supreme Court denies bid to reinstate new congressional map in Missouri from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to overturn block of new congressional map before election from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.