In a unanimous vote the Missouri state Supreme Court overturned the Secretary of State’s refusal to allow citizens to vote on the Republican mid-term gerrymandering and ordered the state to go back to the original Congressional districts.
The Republican redistricting had carved up the heavily Democratic Kansas City area into four districts which snaked out into Republican-dominated rural areas.
In what appears to be a stinging rebuke, the Court declared that a) Missouri’s constitutional referendum laws include the right to challenge any law passed by the Legislature, including redistricting, b) Secretary of State Denny Hoskins had overstepped his authority by refusing to certify the voter petitions for a referendum and c) had deliberately stalled his decision on certification in an attempt to run out the clock on the appeals process.
The Missouri Supreme Court is NOT known for being a bastion for pointy-headed liberals, with all seven justices appointed by Republican governors and all having won retention votes from the state’s voters.
Is the thread title correct or did the MO Supreme Court merely approve a referendum that would allow voters to decide the matter? In California, we approved gerrymandering by referendum. Is there any indication Missourians won’t do the same by voting against invalidating the GOP plan?
Missouri has a long history of voting for good governance measures by ballot referendum that are then gutted or overturned by the legislature.
Also, even if the Missouri voters ultimately approve the new map (which I am not convinced they will), they will not be in use this November. Small victories.
There is the added difficulty of the fact that the primary elections for all of these House races have already concluded using the new map (the ones declared invalid).
It’s unclear what the remedy for that is, and the MO AG is apparently petitioning SCOTUS to force Missouri to use the new maps in November.
Of course the entire reason the new maps were used for the primary is that the MO SecState unilaterally violated the state constitution (according to the MO Supreme Court) in declaring the petition challenging the new maps invalid.
A fact which the MO Supreme Court made sure to highlight.
The tactic of “wait until the last possible second to something illegal because then it will be too messy to undo it” cannot be allowed to stand, and I have some hope that SCOTUS will agree with that.
Unfortunately, the way the referendum is stated makes it reasonably likely it will pass, IMO. Missouri is still a very red state. But it at least buys some time until 2028.
Perhaps more blue states can help offset what MO and the deep-south state are likely to do regarding districts. And ultimately if enough states go full-on gerrymander surely there will be some political will to fix it at the federal level, right? I don’t think anybody really wants a situation where every state has a 90/10 mix of reps depending on which party controls the state government.
No, this is a BIG victory. Missouri has had a referendum option as a check on the Legislature since 1916. This isn’t the first time the Executive or Legislative branch has tried to do an end-run around it, but it’s the first time I can remember that the state Supreme Court (all of which, as I noted, were appointed by Republican governors) has slapped back so hard. Second, they not only declared the Secretary of State overreached his authority, but they ordered that the November Congressional election be held using the pre-2025 maps, and left no wiggle room around it. And finally, the Court also ruled, also unanimously, that a proposed Constitutional amendment forbidding the Legislature from ever restricting a citizen initiative and requiring a supermajority (80 percent) of the Legislature to repeal any law authorized by an initiative, must also appear on the ballot in November.
