The Supreme Court said no, and it did not say why. Justice Brett Kavanaugh turned down Missouri’s emergency application on Tuesday without comment, which means the state must run this fall’s congressional elections on its 2022 map.
The ruling closes off the state’s last quick route to the new Republican-drawn lines. Missouri’s own Supreme Court had thrown the map out the Thursday before. If voters approve it in the November midterms, it takes effect only in 2028.
What the new map did
Last year the Republican-controlled Missouri House passed the redraw, branded “Missouri First,” by 90 to 65. According to AP News, it broke up the Democratic stronghold of the 5th District in Kansas City and spread its voters across rural districts that lean Republican. Republicans stood to take seven of the state’s eight House seats. Democrats would have been left with one.
The attorney general’s reaction
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway went to the nation’s highest court right after the state ruling. She called the decision unprecedented. “Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election,” she said, adding that it “clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis.”
She also said her office would seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court and that she was confident federal courts would not let “every Missouri voter” be disenfranchised, which she said was the effect of the state court’s order.
That relief did not come.
