Appeals Court Orders Missouri to Use New Congressional Map
Yes, the defendants will run back to SCOTUS.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Missouri to use the 2025 Congressional map in the November elections, not the 2022 map.
Missouri already held its primaries using the 2025 Congressional map.
A federal judge restored the 2025 Congressional map a few hours after the Supreme Court rejected a bid to block the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision to throw it out in another lawsuit.
The Eighth Circuit refused to issue a stay, so the defendants rushed to SCOTUS.
SCOTUS paused the federal judge’s decision, restoring the 2022 map for the midterms.
Key word: pause. SCOTUS did not reject the case. A stay meant that the lawsuit could proceed in the appeals court.
See, District Judge Stephen Clark had concerns since Missouri already held its primaries using the new map.
The Eighth Circuit agreed:
Using the 2025 map also will lead to the least amount of confusion for voters subjected to a string of changes this month. For approximately one year, Missouri operated under the 2025 map. During that time, Missourians filed to run for Congress, met candidates, watched campaign advertisements, received campaign mail, and voted under the 2025 map. Any confusion stems from the last-minute decision by a state court to switch the congressional map.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
And I’m still confused over that timeline you posted. Because this has been nuts.
Use the same map/ballot they used in the Primaries
Except that the state supreme court (which is the final authority on state law) found that that map has no legal status at all. The proposed implementing it has not come into effect, and for all we know may never do so.
That makes it different from a case where a court strikes down a new map and says go back to the last valid map. At least the map it orders used was valid, so if the new one is invalid then the old one must obviously still be valid. Here it’s the opposite; we have a map that has never been valid, and the federal court says use it anyway, because we say so.
If it’s truly against the federal constitution to use a map different from the one used for the primary, then the only solution I can see is to hold the House elections provisionally, and don’t count the votes until the referendum result comes in. If the referendum upholds the new map, then all is well, the new map has now come into effect, so proceed to count the House votes. If the referendum rejects the new map then trash all the votes, give the parties a week to come up with candidates, and call a new election for late December, so the new representatives can be sworn in on Jan 3.
The problem is the State used a map that was not legally enacted for the Primaries. Oops. The legislature could authorize the parties to use party meetings or conventions to pick official nominees instead of those primary results, or to ratify them, if need be.
Yes, exactly, and now the federal court is saying that because it did that it must use the same never-legally-enacted map for the election. And the legislature is not in session.
The problem is also the federal court’s decision that since MO has chosen to have primaries, those primaries are also subject to the same constitutional constraints as the election itself.
And the reason the primary was held with the never-enacted map is because the Secretary of State delayed verifying the referendum signatures until the last possible minute. At the time the primary was held the signatures had not yet been verified, so the presumption was that the new map had come into effect and should be used; the Dems tried going to court but the court said it was powerless to do anything until the SoS either finished the verification, or declared that he’d decided not to. He refused to do either until after the primary had already been held.
I think the SoS is the real monkey wrench in this equation. He should have just not verified the signatures and left it alone.
Yes, that’s exactly what the state Supreme Court said.
Wow, you mean we get to actually vote in the same type of election that we voted for for the primaries? What a surprise. Finally a little bit of Common Sense
The wrinkle that keeps getting little traction in the press is that ‘elections’ also include the primaries from a legal perspective. An election is more than just voting on ‘election day’. Its fundraising, advertising, primary contest of political parties, candidate qualifications, ballot access rules for candidates/parties …all.sorts of things. Then there’s the plight/rights of the voters themselves who keep getting whip sawed in/out of CD. Plus the long-standing prohibition on CT intervention close to election day. I get the argument the MO CT made about ripeness but given that timeline they had the option to stay their order and allow things to proceed. That they didn’t and instead dropped a hand grenade while pointing fingers at everyone else IMO lends credibility to the arguments that the MO CT was throwing a fit that they got stymied.
As the federal appeals court itself wrote, there is no such “prohibition”. The Purcell doctrine is a general guidance adopted by federal courts, but in any given case they have the discretion to decide not to follow it (a decision that of course the courts above them can reverse). And it doesn’t apply to state courts at all, since of course the federal courts can’t tell the state courts how to operate.
There’s a damn good reason why courts usually follow that prohibition. Now that we’ve done our primaries and chosen our nominees, the election is set. There is no way to run in different districts because the nominees don’t match the district map. In any case the State should run with the map they started with and tell the courts to stuff it. Anything else tells the voters their vote does not count.
My head hurts. This is the fourth reversal in as many weeks.
Fun fact: Excuse absentee voting starts TODAY in Missouri. I guess county clerks will spin a roulette wheel to determine which voters get which ballot.