Missouri voters seek $80 million in damages after Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ redistricting debacle
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) tried and failed to force voters to use a gerrymandered map for the upcoming midterm elections. Now, several voters are demanding he pay $80 million in damages.
The class action was filed on Friday in Cole County Circuit Court, with five voters seeking to represent roughly 162,000 people who signed onto a petition to trigger a referendum on the ballot this November to overturn the map.
The lawsuit is yet another embarrassing setback for Hoskins, who was held in contempt last week for defying the Missouri Supreme Court, which had barred him from using the gerrymandered congressional map for the general election.
The U.S. Supreme Court, too, twice blocked his attempt to revive the map ahead of Election Day. The redrawn map, requested by President Donald Trump, had eliminated the Kansas City district currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
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The voters in their lawsuit point to a Missouri statute – Section 28.200 – that allows “aggrieved” individuals to recover between $100 and $500 from the secretary of state should they “neglect or refuse to perform any of the duties enjoined on him by law.”
They argue Hoskins’ decision to reject the referendum and his participation in a chaotic legal battle to try to keep the gerrymandered map in play this November amounted to a violation of his responsibilities as the state’s top election official.
“The Secretary of State has no power under Missouri law to declare the scope of the People’s referendum power or that such power does not extend to acts about congressional districts,” the voters argued.
“The right to petition the government to place an act of the General Assembly on the ballot to be voted on by the People of the State of Missouri is a sufficiently strong right, well-established under the Missouri Constitution, that plaintiffs have all been sufficiently injured by Hoskins’s illegal and contumacious actions to deny them this right to entitle plaintiffs … to recover statutory damages under Section 28.200,” the voters said in their lawsuit.