Missouri judge sides with GOP, blocks voters from challenging gerrymander

A Missouri judge ruled Wednesday that voters cannot use the state’s referendum process to challenge a congressional map, handing Republicans another victory in their nearly yearlong effort to keep a pro-GOP gerrymander in place and setting up an expedited showdown at the Missouri Supreme Court.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green sided with Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R), who earlier this month refused to certify a citizen-led referendum seeking to repeal House Bill 1, the congressional map Republicans enacted last year.

Green issued the ruling just hours after the trial concluded.

The ruling embraces the central theory Hoskins used to block the referendum: Because the Missouri Constitution specifically directs the General Assembly to draw congressional districts and does not separately say congressional maps may be subjected to a referendum, voters have no power to challenge them that way.

That reading turns Missouri’s broad referendum guarantee on its head. 

Article III, Section 49 reserves to voters the power to approve or reject “any act of the general assembly” through referendum, while other provisions expressly carve out certain exceptions. Congressional redistricting is not listed among them.

Green nevertheless concluded that the more specific constitutional provision assigning congressional redistricting to the legislature overrides the general referendum right.

He also relied on the absence of any modern referendum on congressional redistricting, despite the fact that Missouri voters used the referendum process in 1922 to reject a congressional map enacted by the legislature, as well as on election law deadlines that he said make the process impractical.

The judge went further, accepting two fringe and extreme federal constitutional arguments advanced by Hoskins.

First, Green endorsed the state’s use of the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which gives state legislatures a role in regulating federal elections, to argue that a small number of petition signers cannot temporarily suspend a congressional map enacted by the legislature while the full electorate decides whether to repeal it.

“That theory inverts the constitutional design,” Green wrote. “The Elections Clause guarantees that the People’s elected representatives control the time, place, and manner of federal elections, not that a small, unelected minority can wield effective veto power over the General Assembly’s redistricting decisions.”

Green also accepted the state’s Guarantee Clause theory — an argument that invokes the U.S. Constitution’s promise of a “Republican Form of Government” to contend that the referendum’s automatic suspension of the map is incompatible with representative government.

“The result Plaintiff seeks is inconsistent with a republican form of government,” Green wrote.

That theory is particularly striking because Green himself acknowledged that Guarantee Clause disputes are generally considered political questions that courts do not decide. He instead reasoned that Hoskins’ determination was made by an elected state official and that courts should not override the judgment of elected branches.

The court also gave the state independent timing grounds for keeping the gerrymander in place, concluding that changing maps after Missouri already held its Aug. 4 congressional primaries would violate federal election deadlines, disrupt the general election and risk invalidating primary votes.

The ruling dismisses People Not Politicians Executive Director Richard von Glahn’s challenge, leaves HB 1 in effect for November and clears the way for an immediate appeal.

People Not Politicians said Wednesday that it will now take the fight to the Missouri Supreme Court, where the group expects the referendum’s fate to be decided quickly.

“The most important thing that happened today is that there was a ruling,” Richard von Glahn, the group’s executive director, said. “The State has tried to slow down the judicial process for months and now that we are out of Cole County, the real decision will be made. Our case now moves forward.”

The appeal is expected to move quickly. Earlier this month, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice W. Brent Powell urged the lower court and the parties to move the case “as quickly as possible,” and the court has already expedited a related referendum case for a Sept. 2 hearing.

“After months of delay from the Secretary of State, we appreciate the Supreme Court’s swiftness in resolving the situation at hand,” von Glahn said. “What matters is that this is resolved before the September 8 deadline, when ballots must be finalized.”

Jen Rice contributed to this reporting.