By Andrew Chung
Sept 25 (Reuters) – The US Supreme Court, acting for a third time in a fierce battle over the makeup of Missouri’s congressional districts, barred the state on Friday from using a redrawn map designed to favor Republicans in November’s elections, a setback for President Donald Trump’s party as it fights to keep control of Congress.
The justices granted a request by the map’s challengers, including a group called People Not Politicians, to suspend lower court decisions that had required the reconfigured US House of Representatives district boundaries to be used in the November 3 midterm elections.
The dispute, waged in both state and federal courts, has led to multiple conflicting court rulings, leaving Missouri’s House districts in limbo as the legal wrangling raced back and forth to the top US judicial body. Absentee voting is already underway in Missouri.
The Supreme Court’s latest action came after the St. Louis-based 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that the Republican-drawn map must be used — even though the Supreme Court had blocked it on September 10, a decision thought to have settled the matter.
The 8th Circuit upheld a temporary order by US District Judge Stephen Clark in St. Louis favoring the Republican map. But in doing so, the 8th Circuit ordered Clark, a Trump appointee, to make his temporary order permanent — a move that appeared to require renewed Supreme Court intervention.
The challengers told the Supreme Court that the 8th Circuit panel that made the ruling, which included two judges appointed by Trump and one appointed by another Republican president, has undermined a September 10 decision by the justices, and urged quick correction.
“Applicants are aware of no case in which a federal court of appeals has ordered a district court to reissue the same relief this court (the Supreme Court) had stayed through appellate and certiorari review,” the challengers said in their filing.
Certiorari review refers to the formal process used by the Supreme Court to select and review cases decided by lower courts.
Trump last year urged Republican-governed states to redraw the boundaries of their House districts to favor Republican candidates in order to boost the party’s chances of maintaining its narrow majority in the House.
Missouri Republicans in 2025 adopted their new map, which dismantled a Kansas City-based House district held by longtime Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver.
The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled on September 3 that under state law the Republican-drawn map could not be used in the midterms until it is first put to a voter referendum.
Missouri officials asked the US Supreme Court to intervene to allow the map, but were rebuffed on September 8 in a decision made by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Clark later that day issued his order barring any map except for the redrawn 2025 one because those congressional district lines were already used in Missouri’s August 4 party primary elections. Clark acted in a lawsuit by Republican US Representative Bob Onder of Missouri and other plaintiffs after the unfavorable ruling by the state’s top court.
The US Supreme Court in turn blocked the redrawn map on September 10. No justice publicly dissented from that brief order, which was unsigned and gave no explanation.
Following that action, Republican officials said the midterms would be held using the state’s previous congressional map, passed in 2022. But the 8th Circuit proceeded with an appeal of Clark’s temporary order, and on Monday it upheld Clark’s decision, paving the way for the Supreme Court to act again.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
