JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the implementation of the newly drawn congressional maps on Tuesday after hearing oral arguments for three cases challenging its constitutionality earlier in the day.
The “Missouri First Map,” which was passed during a special session and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe in September last year, redraws Missouri’s eight congressional districts. One of its goals is to create a Republican advantage in the 5th Congressional District, which contains Kansas City and is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat.
Tuesday’s unanimous rulings mean this year’s congressional elections will be held under the new gerrymandered maps created last fall at the urging of President Donald Trump. At the same time, if a pending initiative petition seeking a referendum on the maps is certified, voters will be asked to decide whether the new maps should be used in the future.
Two similar suits, brought by two different sets of Jackson County residents, were combined for oral arguments. The petitioners in the cases claimed the new map is unconstitutional because it divides natural communities in order to promote certain political outcomes.
They pointed to Article 3, Section 45 of the Missouri Constitution, which says that when the state is split into congressional districts, the districts must be as compact and nearly equal in population as possible.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs focused specifically on the redrawn 4th and 5th Districts, which split the Kansas City area and combine the separate sections with more distant rural areas. They argued that dividing closely united communities and combining far-spread urban and rural areas will prevent citizens living in those districts from having their needs effectively represented.
“Downtown Kansas City is neither close nor united with Osage and Maries counties, hundreds of miles away, under any conceivable definition of that phrase,” said Abha Khanna, an attorney representing the appellants.
The plaintiffs requested that the court reinstate the previously used 2022 map for the upcoming election cycle.
Lawyers defending the state argued that the plaintiffs misapplied the constitution’s compactness standard. They said the 2025 map unites more counties and municipalities within the same districts than the 2022 map, including in the Kansas City area.
Additionally, they argued that no Missouri court has ever declared a congressional map unconstitutional for failing to meet compactness requirements, and doing so now would tread on the legislature’s power to create districts.
“This court has never taken a maximalist approach with respect to the compactness requirement,” Principal Deputy Solicitor General Kathleen Hunker said. “There is no such thing as a perfect map or a perfect district. Maps can be drawn in multiple ways, all of which meet the constitutional requirements.”
The court’s ruling upheld the map’s legality, saying that the challengers failed to prove that the Missouri First Map violated the Constitution.
Chief Justice W. Brent Powell wrote in the opinion that “Every Missouri district in the 2025 Map, including districts 4, 5, and 6, is more compact than the least compact district in the 2022 Map.”
Powell added, “Drawing maps establishing congressional districts is a political process, involving policy decisions that are political in nature, best left to elected representatives and the citizens of this state, not judges.”
The third lawsuit centers on the state’s referendum process and whether citizens can prevent the Missouri First Map from going into effect before it is approved by voters.
On December 9, 2025, two days before the legislation implementing the Missouri First Map went into effect, political action committee People Not Politicians submitted reportedly over 300,000 signatures on a petition to let voters decide whether the map be approved or rejected.
Attorneys representing the appellants argued that the submission of the signatures should have immediately suspended the bill from going into effect until it could be voted upon.
Lawyers defending the state said the suspension could not begin until the signatures were verified by the secretary of state. They claimed this serves both to prevent fraud and to protect the rights of the majority by assuming laws passed by the General Assembly are valid until signatures can be certified by the secretary of state.
“Appellants insist that an unverified box of papers, even a box of fraudulent signatures submitted by a foreign government, must freeze duly enacted state laws to preserve what they call a meaningful right to a referendum,” Solicitor General Louis Capozzi III said. “That is wrong. The Missouri Constitution balances between the right of a political minority to force a referendum vote and the majority’s right to enact laws through elected representatives.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs pointed to Article 3, Section 52(b) of the Missouri Constitution, which says that any law challenged by the people shall not go into effect until it is approved by a majority of voters.
They argued that Missouri citizens are stripped of their veto power when the government is permitted to enforce a law in the months that it takes to certify signatures.
Additionally, they said that the state already has safeguards in place to protect from fraud in the referendum process, including exempting emergency legislation from the referendum process and criminalizing fraud in the referendum process.
Justice Zel Fischer questioned what the issue would be with waiting until the secretary of state completed his role in verifying that the petition is sufficient, which must occur by the July 28 deadline, prior to the election.
Attorney for the appellants Jonathan Hawley responded that delaying the suspension would “dilute the referendum right, if not destroy it altogether.”
“The purpose of that right is to give the people the opportunity to approve legislation before it goes into effect,” Hawley said. “Referendum does not exist to allow people to weigh in on bills that have already gone into effect. The sufficiency review must happen after the suspension has already occurred.”
The court ruled that nothing in the plain language of the constitution allows for a petition’s filing alone to automatically suspend a law. The Missouri First Map will remain in effect while the secretary of state completes the certification process on the referendum petition, expected later this year.
Justice Ginger Gooch wrote in the opinion, “While article III, section 52(b) addresses when “[a]ny measure” takes effect after having been referred to the people, it does not provide the mere filing of a referendum petition automatically suspends the act of the General Assembly at issue.”