WASHINGTON – Missouri can’t use a congressional map drawn to give Republicans an additional seat in the upcoming November elections, the Supreme Court said Sept. 8 in a blow to GOP efforts to keep their razor-thin majority in the U.S. House.
The disputed map would have turned a seat held by Democrats into one that Republicans were expected to win.
The Missouri Supreme Court had said that the map must be approved by voters in a November referendum before it can take effect.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency appeals from Missouri, rejected a requestfrom state officials and the Republican Party for the high court to intervene.
The emergency appeal was the latest redistricting battle to reach the Supreme Court after President
Donald Trump pushed red states to rejigger maps to improve Republicans’ chances of keeping control of Congress.
The map approved by the state 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.
A group formed to oppose the new map, People Not Politicians Missouri, 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.
The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously disagreed in a decision handed down days before the state’s ballot was scheduled to be finalized.
"The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise," Judge Ginger Gooch wrote for the court.
The court also said any problems caused by the timing of the ruling is Hoskins' fault for taking eight months to make his decision on the validity of the ballot initiative.
Under state law, the ballot is supposed to be set by Sept. 8. Absentee ballots are scheduled to be sent to military and oversees voters on Sept. 19 to comply with federal rules.
The state's Aug. 4 House primaries took place using the redrawn map.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway told the Supreme Court that the timing of the state court’s decision blocking the map from being used in November “inflicts unprecedented chaos on Missouri.”
She said Missouri is “genuinely unsure whether it can switch its governing congressional map in time to run a timely federal election.”
Lawyers for the head of People Not Politicians Missouri, countered that the secretary of state “engineered the timing issue he now presents as an insurmountable burden.”
“Now that the Missouri Supreme Court has rejected his gambit, he asks this Court to deliver him the political victory to which he was never entitled under the Missouri Constitution,” the lawyers wrote in their response to the state’s appeal.
Multiple fights over congressional maps have been brought to the Supreme Court in the past year.
The justices ruled favorably for Republicans in redistricting battles in Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia and New York. The court sided with the Democrats in a challenge to California’s new map.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court won't let Missouri use GOP-favored congressional map
