Missouri AG Fights Map Ruling; Maryland Boosts Democrats

Missouri's attorney general is trying to reverse the ruling that just put a Democratic House seat back on the board — and Democrats picked up a second court win the same night, in Maryland.

What November's ballot looks like now

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the state cannot use its new Republican-drawn congressional map in the Nov. 3 general election, the Wall Street Journal reported via Political Wire. The court ordered the state back onto the 2022 lines and put the new map itself before voters in November.

That restores the Kansas City-anchored 5th District that Republicans had redrawn. Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's seat — the one the new map was built to flip to Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin — reverts to the district Cleaver has held for two decades. About 59% of the reshaped 5th District's voters were new under the Republican plan, according to reporting compiled by NBC News and the Boston Globe.

Chief Judge Ginger Gooch wrote for the court that the referendum petition filed by the group People Not Politicians was "legal, sufficient, and timely," that Secretary of State Denny Hoskins was wrong to keep it off the ballot, and that the 2025 map "is not the law and has never been the law," according to the Missouri Independent's account of the opinion. Election officials were barred from using it unless voters approve it first.

The emergency stay

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced late Thursday that her office had filed for a stay at the Missouri Supreme Court — what she described as a required step before an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to The Gateway Pundit and BizPac Review.

Maryland goes the other way

Hours earlier, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled that a Democratic-backed redistricting amendment must appear on the November ballot, reversing two lower court rulings that had blocked it, the Associated Press reported via the New York Post. The court did order the ballot summary rewritten.