WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court is deciding once again whether Missouri must use a congressional map drawn at President Donald Trump’s urging to give Republicans an additional seat in the upcoming midterms.
The case made its third trip to the high court in recent weeks, in an emergency appeal filed late Sept. 22 by opponents of the map.
The group, People Not Politicians, asked the court to block a lower court’s ruling that the map go into effect. That ruling by a federal appeals court in Missouri was issued despite the fact that ballots are already being distributed under a different map that the Supreme Court has twice said should be used in November.
"A lower court cannot demand the same relief this Court has stayed by cloaking it in a new order,"
the group told the justices in its appeal.
The Trump-backed map would turn a seat held by Democrats into one that Republicans are expected to win, helping Republicans hold onto their slim majority in the House.
The legal battle stems from Trump pushing red states to rejigger maps midway through the normal redistricting cycle.
The map approved by the Missouri Legislature last year breaks up a Democratic-held district in Kansas City, giving Republicans an advantage in seven of the state's eight House districts.
The group formed to oppose the new map collected enough signatures to put the changes to a public vote through a ballot measure.
But Missouri’s secretary of state, Republican Denny Hoskins, said the state’s constitution doesn’t allow ballot measures over congressional redistricting. He did not issue that decision until Aug. 4, the same day as the state’s primary, preventing a legal challenge to the map before the primary.
At the beginning of September, the Missouri Supreme Court said state law requires the map be approved by voters before it can be used.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency appeals from Missouri, rejected a request from state officials and the Republican Party for the high court to intervene.
Hours later, a federal judge ruled for Republicans in a separate lawsuit, ordering the disputed map be used.
The Supreme Court paused that order. But the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 21 issued a new order putting the map back in place.
The appeals court said that the disputed map must be used for the general election because it was used for the primary. Otherwise, the court wrote, “some Missouri voters will have more say than others on who represents them in Congress,” which would violate the Constitution. One in four Missourians are in different districts than they were in the primary, so they did not have a say on the party nominees in their current district, the court said. And in districts where one party dominates, the winner of the primary is the overwhelming favorite to win the general election.
The court also said the disputed map could be restored at this late date without significant cost, confusion, or hardship.
The group opposing the map said the appeals court's order is, in fact, causing "chaos on both sides of Election Day: confusion over how to conduct the election now, and uncertainty over the rules governing its results."
People Not Politicians also argue that there is no constitutional right to cast votes in the same district for both the primary and general election, "even when state law prohibits that result."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fight over Trump-backed congressional map returns to Supreme Court
