Missouri court weighs contempt for election official over map directive

Supreme Court blocked redrawn map for second time on Thursday

The Missouri Supreme Court convened proceedings Thursday to decide whether to hold Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, the state’s top election official, in contempt. Hoskins had told local election officials earlier in the week to use a redrawn congressional map that the state court had deemed invalid.

The state Supreme Court said last week that the redrawn districts could not be used unless voters approved them in a ballot referendum. The now-invalidated map was used in the state’s primary, and officials now face a scramble to finalize congressional contests for Election Day, according to The Wall Street Journal. Candidates and voters remain uncertain about who will be on the ballot in which districts.

Missouri’s legislature voted last year to redraw the state’s congressional districts during a mid-decade redistricting push across the country as Republicans and Democrats competed for control of the House. The redrawn map would have given Republican candidates an advantage in seven of Missouri’s eight House districts.

Missouri’s legislature, like other Republican-controlled legislatures, pursued the mid-decade redistricting at the urging of President Trump, the Journal reported. The Trump administration supported the state Republican effort to restore the pro-Republican map in a brief filed Thursday morning by Solicitor General John Sauer.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected an emergency appeal from Missouri Republicans on Tuesday and declined to disturb the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling. Kavanaugh, who handles emergency requests from Missouri and surrounding states, did not refer the matter to the full Supreme Court, which the Journal described as a sign that he did not believe the dispute raised a serious legal issue.

Minutes after Kavanaugh’s action, a federal judge in a separate case restored the Republican-favored districts, setting off a quick flurry of new proceedings that returned the dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court then blocked Missouri for a second time from using the congressional map in the November midterm elections. The court issued a brief order Thursday with no recorded dissents less than an hour after Missouri Republicans submitted a legal brief seeking to use their preferred map. The unusually rapid timing suggested the justices wanted to send a message about the Republican effort to circumvent the Missouri Supreme Court’s prior ruling, the Journal reported.

The Journal updated its report at 11:57 a.m. ET on Sept. 10. Lydia Wheeler, the report’s author, is a legal affairs reporter in the Journal’s Washington, D.C., bureau. She previously covered the Supreme Court and a range of legal issues at Bloomberg Law and The Hill.