Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R), who championed last year’s redistricting efforts in his state, shared his disappointment in a Supreme Court decision requiring Missouri to use its old congressional map in the November election. “It is disappointing that today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court means Missouri will conduct its…
Page A4From§Eachthe supper edition — 26 September 2026
Missouri's map loses in court a fifth time; governor scores it 'disappointing'
As it ran on the front
Start counting from September 5, because that's when Missouri asked the Supreme Court to save a congressional map its own state court had already thrown out. The state's lawyers called the situation a "federal-election-administration disaster" — their words. Three days later, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the justice assigned to handle emergency petitions from Missouri, said no. The new map was dead; the old lines, the ones voters had used for the past two elections, went back on the books.
On September 9, People Not Politicians — the group that had already won this fight once in state court — asked the same Court to make Kavanaugh's denial stick for good. By September 23, the state's opponents were back before the justices for what one wire report flatly logged as "the third time this month," asking the Court to end the legal mess.…
…(cont) Today, the Supreme Court answered for the fifth time this cycle: blocked. Missouri will run its November election on the same congressional districts it has used for the past two elections — the ones the state spent three separate trips to the nation's highest court trying to erase.
Governor Mike Kehoe, who championed the new map and fought every ruling against it, was asked for a reaction. Not unlawful. Not a threat to the state's own election machinery, which is what a governor might call it when a legislature spends a cycle redrawing lines that courts keep erasing. Disappointing is the word you use when a hand doesn't come in — not when the same map gets thrown out five times in one year. The map is dead again. The word for it never gets any bigger.
“Five losses, and every time the word for it is "disappointing" — the same soft word you'd use for a rainout. This isn't weather, it's a state spending a whole election cycle trying to draw itself a gerrymandered map, and the courts keep putting the old lines back because that's what the law says. The word never gets bigger, but the map keeps deciding whose vote counts more.”
“The governor said "disappointing" because that's what leadership sounds like — you don't call the Supreme Court names just because they ruled against you five times, unlike certain people. Missouri was well within its rights to keep asking courts to reconsider; that's due process, not gaming the system. Five denials in one cycle is just the process working — wait, if it's working, why do we keep asking it to stop?”
Earlier in this story
- Missouri will run 2026 on the map it spent five Supreme Court denials trying to replace By Sal · the early bird edition, 26 September 2026
The receipts
After weeks of legal battles, Missouri voters will cast November ballots in the districts used in the past two 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 […]
· Supreme Court denies bid to reinstate new congressional map in Missouri from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court urged to wade into legal mess over Missouri congressional map from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to overturn block of new congressional map before election from the morgue, 5 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.