Supreme Court rejects GOP’s third effort to capture Democratic House seat in Missouri

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The third time was not the charm.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an effort to use a congressional map in Missouri for the November midterm elections that would have given Republicans an opportunity to pick up an extra House of Representatives seat, siding with opponents of the proposed districts for the third time in as many weeks.

The court’s unsigned decision, the second of the day to deal with the midterms, seemed likely to put to rest a whirlwind legal saga that has bounced through state and federal courts for much of September. The order was a loss for Republicans and President Donald Trump, who had urged Missouri to redraw its congressional maps last year as part of unusual mid-decade redistricting designed to retain GOP control of the House next year.

There were no noted dissents.

“Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed. Absentee voting has already begun, as has military and overseas voting,” the court wrote. “At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos.”

While the case affected only a single seat, it raised questions about the interplay between state and federal courts heading into this year’s pivotal midterms, and once again underscored a tension between lower courts and often unexplained Supreme Court orders on the emergency docket.

Invoking the ‘Purcell principle’

Making clear for the first time that the court simply thought it was too late for the changes, the opinion made abundantly clear that the fight is over and the earlier maps will be used.

“The District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri,” the court wrote in the decision.

The opinion repeatedly cited a judicial doctrine known as the “Purcell principle.” Rooted in a 2006 Supreme Court decision, the principle warns federal courts at all levels against making last-minute changes to voting rules.

“The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started,” the court wrote.

On Friday, however, the court handed the Trump administration a win in its push to use a controversial database to help state election officials identify non-citizens. Over the dissent of the three liberal justices, the court rejected arguments that the administration broke the law by making it easier for officials to use the data system to vet voters’ citizenship status.

Rejected, again

Both sides seemed to agree that the legal whiplash had created confusion for Missouri voters, though the parties differed sharply on who was to blame. County election officials, meanwhile, told a federal appeals court more than a week ago that it was already too late then to switch back to the Republican-friendly map and warned federal courts against inflicting “additional vertigo on local election authorities.”

A group opposed to the state’s 7-1 Republican map filed the emergency case at the Supreme Court on Tuesday after a federal appeals court effectively ordered the state to use that map because voters had already selected nominees for those districts in the primary election. That decision conflicted with a ruling from the state’s highest court, which ordered Missouri to revert to an earlier map, used in the 2022 election, so that voters could decide which map to use in a referendum.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative, declined an effort by Missouri Republicans to pause that state court decision.

But minutes after Kavanaugh’s brief order, a federal district court stepped in with a ruling in favor of the GOP map. That case was once again appealed to the US Supreme Court, which once again sided against reviving the GOP map.

The conservative 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals then took up the case again, concluding 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 appeals court decision effectively required the state to once again move forward with the 7-1 Republican map.

Missouri’s new map targeted the 5th Congressional District, held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, by breaking up its Kansas City base and stretching it into rural and Republican-leaning parts of the state. Under that new map, there would have been seven conservative-leaning districts and one Democratic-leaning, a change from the current 6-2 split.

The back-and-forth over the map was reminiscent of a controversy that erupted last year when Justice Neil Gorsuch admonished lower courts for repeatedly siding against Trump in similar cases after the Supreme Court had already weighed in on its emergency docket. In that case, the court allowed the Trump administration to halt nearly $800 million in research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health. That came weeks after the court similarly permitted the administration to block millions of dollars in grants to states intended to address teacher shortages.

“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Kavanaugh.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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