Missouri’s Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the state’s new congressional map on Tuesday as Democrats try to slow down the Republican Party’s recent redistricting wins.
The Missouri high court is hearing three cases on the GOP-friendly map, which seeks to redraw one of the Democrats’ two seats in the state’s House delegation. The district under fire is represented by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), who serves constituents in a portion of Kansas City.
Gov. Mike Kehoe (R-MO) ordered a special legislative session last year for state lawmakers to consider the redrawn congressional map. The plan, signed into law by Kehoe in September 2025, split parts of Kansas City into three districts and added Republican-leaning areas to Cleaver’s district.
The redrawn districts will take effect in the state’s 2026 midterm elections unless the Missouri Supreme Court rules against them.
One of the cases stems from an anti-gerrymandering group’s efforts to force a statewide referendum on redistricting by obtaining more than 300,000 petition signatures from residents.
In its lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri argues the submission of the signatures should have frozen the enacted map before it took effect in December 2025. A lower court disagreed with the civil rights group in March, siding with the state’s argument that “a referendum does not suspend legislation upon mere submission.”
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, must verify the petition signatures before declaring them valid. He has until Aug. 4, the date of the state’s primary elections, to do so.
The ACLU is now taking its case to the Missouri Supreme Court, hoping for a ruling in its favor. That may be a long shot, however. The same court previously upheld the constitutionality of the new map in late March.
The other two redistricting challenges, while similar to the referendum case, center on whether the map fulfills a state constitutional requirement of compactness. The “compact” standard refers to congressional districts that “are square, rectangular, or hexagonal in shape to the extent permitted by natural or political boundaries,” according to the Missouri Constitution.
The state’s founding document also requires congressional districts to be contiguous, meaning they share a common border, and to have their populations remain roughly the same as before.
The cases were appealed after a state judge rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the map violated the compactness requirement. The judge determined that the new districts, on average, are more compact, even though Cleaver’s district is not.
The lawsuits were brought by two different groups of Jackson County residents. Lower courts combined the two cases, and the Missouri Supreme Court is now hearing them together.
It remains to be seen whether the court’s ruling bolsters or hinders Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting efforts.
Missouri Republicans quickly followed their Texas counterparts in aggressively redrawing congressional districts last year. Since then, many more red states, especially those in the South, have joined the movement.
BY THE NUMBERS: HOW MANY SEATS HAS EACH PARTY GAINED IN REDISTRICTING?
Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida are among the states taking up redistricting, while South Carolina has been pressured to weigh it. Their recent moves have garnered praise from President Donald Trump, who wishes to maintain a Republican majority in the House for the rest of his second term.
Democrats were dealt a blow late last week when the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the state’s voter-approved redistricting amendment that would likely have given the Democratic Party a 10-1 advantage in the House. The state’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, Jay Jones, quickly appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans have relentlessly criticized the emergency application for a stay over its typos.