Supreme Court hearing on Senate redistricting map set for Thursday
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Missouri Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday regarding the 2022 state legislative redistricting map after some Missourians found it to be unconstitutional and are now challenging it.
The hearing began at 9 a.m. at the Missouri Supreme Court in Jefferson City.
The lawsuit follows after two Missourians sued Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft, and the Judicial Commission after Buchanan County was split into two districts, District 12 and 34, and the city of Hazelwood was also split into Districts 13 and 14.
The case was taken to the circuit courts where a trial was conducted, and ruled in favor of Ashcroft, finding the map to be constitutional. The challengers appealed.
The challenging group stated during the hearing that while redistricting is a part of the political process, it is shaped by clear boundaries and standards. They also stated there is gerrymandering of the system and destroys faith in the political process.
The opposing side argued the map was constitutional.
The appeal has multiple questions for the court.
One being if the circuit court applied the wrong standard of evaluation to determine if the map is constitutional when it found "the commissioners choices were reasonable".
Another question posed is that if the population of the district can be more than a one percent difference than the ideal population. In addition, whether the compactness requirement for districts includes preserving local political subdivisions and to see where divided districts were kept to as little as possible.
It also will question if the constitution's language should require compactness to be determined by shape and political boundaries and not a statistical analysis.
Check back later for updates.
