The Supreme Court of the United States granted a Missouri redistricting emergency stay on 10 September, blocking a federal district court order and restoring the state’s 2025 congressional map, the second time in two days the case had reached the Court, and the second time within hours of full briefing being filed.
The sequence began on 3 September, when the Missouri Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling concluding that a referendum petition was ‘legal, sufficient, and timely’ under the state constitution. The effect was stark: the SCOTUSblog reported the court held the new 2025 map had never gone into effect and would not do so ‘unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election.’ Roughly 3% of voters had signed the petition triggering that referendum requirement.
Missouri filed its first emergency application, captioned Hoskins v. von Glahn, on 4 September. Circuit Justice Kavanaugh set a response deadline for 7 September. Shortly after midnight on 8 September, Missouri filed its reply brief. By 4:30 PM that same day, Justice Kavanaugh denied the application in chambers, with no noted dissent.
Federal Lawsuit Opens a Second Front
Within minutes of that denial, Judge Clark in the Eastern District of Missouri issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) barring Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using any congressional map other than the 2025 version. The Missouri Independent reported that the federal action was brought by US Representative Bob Onder, state Senator Rick Brattin, and two voters seeking to keep the 2025 map in place, a map that shifts territory around Onder’s home into the 3rd District and redraws the 5th District to favour Republicans.
Judge Clark acknowledged that conducting state elections in accordance with the Missouri constitution ‘undoubtedly qualifies as an important interest,’ but found the challengers faced irreparable harm. He separately warned that ‘[u]sing a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of Missouri’s congressional elections, calling into question the candidacy of those nominated in the primaries.’ The TRO was set to expire after 14 days, on 22 September, but the emergency stay application filed on the Supreme Court docket argued a final order on district lines was needed no later than 14 September.
The Eighth Circuit declined to stay the TRO. That evening, the referendum group, People Not Politicians, filed an emergency application in the second case, People Not Politicians v. Onder, No. 26A326. Justice Kavanaugh set the response deadline for 10:00 AM on 10 September, approximately 16 hours away.
The Missouri Redistricting Emergency Stay and What Preceded It
Over those 16 hours, Missouri filed a 51-page opposition, the representatives and voters filed a 50-page brief, and the Solicitor General filed an 18-page brief. At around 10:30 AM (less than 30 minutes after those submissions landed) the Court granted the Missouri redistricting emergency stay without any noted dissent, referring the application from Justice Kavanaugh to the full Court.
The speed of the decision invites scrutiny. The stay application had argued that delay served the state’s political interests directly: the Attorney General had publicly stated, ‘As long as the status quo is the new maps, delay works in our favor.’ According to the Missouri Independent, election authorities were already preparing ballots under the 2025 map when the stay was granted, and Secretary Hoskins warned that reverting to the 2022 districts could jeopardise the 19 September deadline for dispatching ballots to military and overseas voters.
The Eighth Circuit subsequently instructed the district court to enter a permanent order requiring use of the 2025 map, but directed that order be held in abeyance until 5:00 PM CDT on 28 September to allow the Supreme Court further time to weigh in, per SCOTUSblog. Separately, a Missouri state court judge found Secretary Hoskins in potential contempt for directing local election authorities to implement the 2025 map in defiance of the state court’s orders. The Missouri Supreme Court ordered Hoskins to answer the contempt charge.
The broader procedural lesson sits alongside the substantive one. Justice Kagan, in her dissent in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (No. 25A269) (decided 6-3 in September 2025) complained that the emergency docket afforded ‘no opportunity to deliberate in conference.’ The Missouri sequence, as Brownstone Law summarised, suggests otherwise: the Court moved from briefing to order in under 30 minutes, which implies prior deliberation rather than none. Whether that informal alignment occurred by email or in an emergency conference, the result was a fully-formed order before the ink on the reply briefs had dried.
The Eighth Circuit’s 28 September deadline is now the next hard constraint. If the Supreme Court takes no further action before that date, the 2025 map stands for the 2026 midterms.
