The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Missouri Republicans’ attempt to jam through a new gerrymander that would leave Democrats with only one House seat to their seven.
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) had to exert extra effort to try to muscle the new map through: The state allows citizens to put legislation up for a statewide vote before it can be implemented if they obtain enough signatures to back a ballot measure. The group People Not Politicians did just that, submitting the thousands of required signatures back in December. Hoskins was then supposed to verify the signatures; if the group had collected enough valid ones, the legislation creating the new map would be frozen until voters got the chance to vote it up or down.
Hoskins, though, tried to avoid that vote by dragging his feet, waiting to reject the petition until the last possible day — August 4, the date of the Missouri primaries, which were held under Republicans’ new 7-1 gerrymandered map. State Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said publicly during a radio interview earlier this year that “delay works in our favor.” Hoskins declared the petition insufficient, saying that the citizen referendum process did not apply to maps passed by the legislature.
People Not Politicians kept fighting in court, last week notching a major victory as the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the referendum process does cover redistricting, and that the new map should have never been implemented.
Hoskins then lobbed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to intercede so Missouri could use the maximal Republican gerrymander — which was drawn in the first place after the Court’s Callais decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and made racial discrimination in redistricting all but impossible to prove. Many other states, mostly in the South, have similarly rushed to eliminate their Democratic, majority-Black districts to artificially bolster Republicans’ seat tally.
Hoskins’ application for a stay, filed Friday, was denied by Justice Brett Kavanaugh (who oversees cases from that region of the country) on Tuesday. That order clears the way for Missouri’s general election to be held under its 2022 map, and its citizens to decide then whether they want future elections to be governed by the 7-1 gerrymander.
“Boom,” tweeted Chuck Hatfield, legal counsel for People Not Politicians.
The Supreme Court did not immediately publish any explanation to accompany the rejection of the stay request.
