A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Missouri must use the Republican-drawn 2025 congressional map for November's elections, a move that could hand the GOP a seventh House seat in the state but faces yet another Supreme Court challenge.
The St. Louis-based Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a prior decision by Judge Stephen R. Clark, who found that reverting to Missouri's older 2022 congressional map for the general election after voters already used the 2025 map in August primaries would violate the U.S. Constitution. The three-judge panel ordered a permanent injunction requiring the 2025 map's use, but delayed the ruling from taking effect for one week, giving opponents a narrow window to ask the Supreme Court to step in for a third time.
The stakes are straightforward. Missouri's Republican-dominated state legislature drew the 2025 map to split Kansas City's 5th Congressional District, the state's largest metro area, into two districts, effectively erasing the seat held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Under the current 2022 configuration, Missouri sends two Democrats to Congress. The new map would likely cut that number to one, giving Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the state's House delegation.
Judge Clark's underlying decision, now affirmed by the appeals panel, rested on a simple constitutional principle: the same map must govern both the primary and the general election. More than 1.2 million Missourians cast ballots in August primaries drawn under the 2025 lines. Switching maps now, an August state trial court had already warned, "would move hundreds of thousands of voters into different districts for the imminent 2026 general election compared to the districts in which they cast their ballots in the August primary elections."
Clark did not hold back in his earlier ruling, as Breitbart reported:
"This Court holds that Missouri's current plan to use the 2022 map in the November 2026 general election violates the Constitution. Only use of the 2025 map complies with the Constitution and federal law."
The appeals panel majority echoed that reasoning. In its ruling, the court wrote that "the Constitution does not permit Missouri to use a different congressional district map in the November 2026 general election than it used in the August 2026 primary election." The panel added that any voter confusion "stems from the last-minute decision by a state court to switch the congressional map", a pointed rebuke of the Missouri Supreme Court's earlier intervention.
That intervention is the heart of the dispute. In early September, the Missouri Supreme Court sided with opponents of the new map and ordered the state to use the 2022 lines for November while the 2025 map faced a voter referendum. The legal battle that followed has bounced between state and federal courts for weeks, producing conflicting rulings and growing confusion among election officials statewide.
The Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities announced it will not use the 2025 map for November. The clerks' group filed an appeal arguing the state does not have enough time to produce new ballots. Absentee and mail-in ballots were slated to go out just one day after Monday's ruling, and military and overseas voters have already received ballots, ballots printed under the 2022 map.
That logistical reality puts election administrators in an impossible position. If the Eighth Circuit's order stands, clerks across the state would need to reprint and redistribute ballots reflecting entirely different district lines, mid-cycle, with early voting underway.
Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, an organization opposing the redrawn map, told the Associated Press that the court fight has already done enough damage. Von Glahn said:
"Ballots have been printed, and Missourians have already voted. Thousands more will vote before this order seeks to take effect. Officials should stop wasting taxpayers' money on pointless legal action and instead focus on administering our elections."
Von Glahn's complaint, however, sidesteps the constitutional question the Eighth Circuit addressed head-on. If voters cast primary ballots under one set of district lines and general-election ballots under a different set, the mismatch creates its own form of disenfranchisement, one the federal courts found unacceptable.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the 2025 map twice on procedural grounds, most recently earlier this month. In neither instance did the justices rule on the merits of the map itself. The procedural rejections left the constitutional question unresolved, which is precisely the opening the Eighth Circuit used to issue Monday's order.
Now the case could land on the Supreme Court's desk a third time. The one-week delay built into the panel's ruling gives opponents just days to file an emergency petition. Given the court's prior reluctance to intervene, the outcome is far from certain. But the posture has changed: the Eighth Circuit is no longer asking the Supreme Court to block a state court order. It is asking the justices to let a federal constitutional ruling stand.
That distinction matters. The Supreme Court's emergency docket has been unusually crowded this year, and the justices have shown a pattern of deferring on procedural grounds rather than wading into the substance of politically charged redistricting fights. Whether they will do so again, with ballots already in voters' hands, is the central unanswered question.
President Trump weighed in on Sept. 4, days before the appeals panel ruled, posting on Truth Social that the Missouri Supreme Court's decision to restore the 2022 map was unconstitutional and unworkable. Trump called the state court's ruling "horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional" and warned "there won't be enough time to change the map back with the Election coming up in a very short period of time."
In a second post that same day, Trump added:
"The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America! Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for 'Justice' in Missouri!"
The Eighth Circuit's ruling aligns with the position Trump staked out. The new map favors Republicans in a 7-1 split, erasing the Kansas City-based district that has been a Democratic stronghold. Rep. Cleaver's seat would effectively disappear under the redrawn lines.
Missouri's Republican legislature drew the 2025 map with exactly this outcome in mind. The state used those lines for its August primaries without incident. More than a million voters participated. Only after the Missouri Supreme Court intervened did the legal chaos begin, a sequence that prompted lawsuits from Republican lawmakers seeking to restore the map the legislature passed.
Whether the 2025 map ultimately governs November's elections now depends on nine justices in Washington and a ticking clock. Ballots are printing. Voters are casting them. And Missouri's election officials are caught between two maps, two court systems, and a deadline that has already passed.
When courts change the rules after voters have already played by them, the only people who lose are the voters themselves. Missouri's legislature drew a map, the state used it, and more than a million citizens cast ballots under it. The Constitution does not allow a do-over mid-game, and the Eighth Circuit was right to say so.