The messy legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map reached the Supreme Court for a third time in as many weeks late Tuesday as the parties battle less than 50 days before November’s elections over whether the GOP can implement its new boundaries. Twice before, the nation's high court has ruled against the GOP, forcing the state...
Page A6From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 26 September 2026
THIRD TIME
Supreme Court blocks Missouri Republicans' congressional map for third time this year.
As it ran on the front
In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a congressional map. In 2025, like Republican legislators in several other states responding to pressure from the White House, it enacted a new one — a 7-1 House map, the design Republicans wanted. Under the Missouri Constitution, a new law does not take effect if enough voters sign a referendum petition against it, and enough had. The Missouri Supreme Court ordered the state back onto its 2022 lines pending that vote. That single fact is what the rest of September has been arguing about.
On September 5, Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court to override the state court before November, telling Justice Brett Kavanaugh that the ruling had created a "federal-election-administration disaster." On September 8, Kavanaugh denied the request. Two days later, on September 10, the full Court blocked a separate federal order that had let Missouri keep using the 7-1 map anyway — with no noted dissents, from a bench that includes three of the same president's appointees. Democracy groups, in their own account, called it the second loss for the GOP's map in as many days.…
…(cont) It did not end there. On September 21, a three-judge federal appeals panel reopened the question, and by September 23 the fight was back at the Supreme Court for a third time in three weeks, less than fifty days before the midterms. On September 25, the Court blocked the 7-1 map again, this time in an unsigned decision warning that switching maps again this close to the election "would usher in electoral chaos." Missouri stays on its 2022 lines. Same map, same bench, third rejection since Labor Day.
The same Friday, in a separate order, the same Court let the Trump administration's citizenship database back onto state voter rolls — the tool a federal appeals panel had blocked three weeks earlier. Two rulings, one bench, one day: a map Missouri Republicans drew gets thrown out for a third time, and a voter-screening tool lower courts had rejected gets waved through on its first trip to the top. The Court that finds "electoral chaos" in redrawn districts finds none in a new database that decides who counts as a voter in the first place. Missouri voters get their 2022 map back because a court said so three times. Whoever built the database only had to ask once.
“Same building, same Friday: a map gets killed a third time, and a database nobody voted on gets waved through on the first try. One decides which district you're in, the other decides whether you're a voter at all — and guess which one the same nine people slow-walked and which one they rubber-stamped. That's not a coincidence, that's the org chart.”
“Look, this is just the Missouri Constitution's referendum clause doing what it's designed to do — the courts aren't picking a side, they're reading a signature count. Three rejections isn't a pattern, it's procedure working exactly as written. Did I say three? That's — that number isn't in my notes, let me get back to you.”
Earlier in this story
- Same voter database, blocked by an appeals court, approved by the Supreme Court twenty days later, unaltered. By Sal · the midnight edition, 26 September 2026
The receipts
The Supreme Court said in an unsigned decision that ordering Missouri to restore its 2025 map "would usher in electoral chaos."
Despite its right-wing supermajority, the US Supreme Court has twice struck down Missouri Republicans' rigged congressional districts for the November midterm elections, but after an appellate panel's Monday decision, the map fight is headed back to the justices. Less than two weeks after the justices delivered their second blow to the…
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 […]
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.
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...
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to overturn block of new congressional map before election from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court denies bid to reinstate new congressional map in Missouri from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court blocks Missouri's use of GOP-favored congressional map from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· 'Massive Loss for Trump': US Supreme Court Tosses Missouri GOP Map, Again 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.