Scope of Republicans’ Missouri gerrymander revealed in latest briefs to Supreme Court 

Missouri Republicans have waged a yearlong battle to use a redrawn congressional map for the midterm elections, and new court filings reveal just how big an impact the gerrymander would have on voters.

In briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Missouri officials and Republican candidates highlighted the fact that more than 1.4 million people – or roughly 1 in 3 voters statewide – would shift between the new and old districts, all in an effort to eliminate a single Democratic seat in Kansas City

Missouri’s current U.S. House delegation already has six Republicans and two Democrats. The new map would make that split 7-1.

“These two maps are quite different,” lawyers for Missouri’s attorney general wrote as they asked the justices to put the 2025 gerrymandered map in use for the general election. 

Republican candidates suing to reinstate the gerrymandered map also argued that changing 1.4 million voters’ districts between the primary and general elections represents a real harm to their constituents.

“That is not a hypothetical harm,” lawyers for the candidates wrote. “More than 1.4 million Missourians could not vote for the congressional district nominees who will appear on their November 2026 general election ballot, and more than a quarter-million Missourians who voted in the August 2026 primary election cast a vote for a congressional district candidate who now cannot represent them.”

The gerrymandered map drawn up in 2025 in response to President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push to boost Republicans’ odds of holding the U.S. House of Representatives was used in the August primaries because Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) refused to certify a referendum measure putting the new map up for a vote in November.

The Missouri Supreme Court later ruled the 2025 map never legally went into effect and can’t be used unless voters approve it, meaning the state must operate under the congressional map used in 2022 and 2024 this fall.

Now, ballots are being sent to overseas voters and in-person absentee voting has begun using the map originally drawn up in 2022.

But in a last-ditch pitch to the Supreme Court, Missouri Republicans argue the gerrymandered 2025 map used in the primaries should also be the map used in the general election.