Missouri redistricting fight reaches Supreme Court for third time

The messy legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map reached the Supreme Court for a third time in as many weeks late Tuesday as the parties battle less than 50 days before November’s elections over whether the GOP can implement its new boundaries.

Twice before, the nation’s high court has ruled against the GOP , forcing the state to move forward with its old map before the party gave itself a pickup opportunity by breaking up a Democratic stronghold in the Kansas City area.

But those rulings are technically interim. On Monday, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its final ruling, siding with Republicans . The 8th Circuit ruled it unconstitutional to force officials to revert to the old map since they already held the primary under the new boundaries.

Without the Supreme Court’s intervention, the lower court’s ruling takes effect next week, which instructs Republicans to permanently move forward with their favored lines.

A referendum organizer fighting the GOP now wants another emergency intervention from the justices, warning that ballots are already mailed and absentee voting has begun under the other design.

“The result is chaos on both sides of Election Day: confusion over how to conduct the election now, and uncertainty over the rules governing its results,” the organizer’s attorneys wrote.

Missouri’s redistricting battle plunged into chaos earlier this month when the state’s top court ruled the Missouri Constitution guarantees the organizer a chance to bring his referendum challenging Republicans’ map before voters before it takes effect.

By that point, Republicans had already held the primary under their new 7-1 map. But under the state court’s ruling, officials must go back to their 6-2 lines before Missouri got involved in the mid-decade redistricting war.

In the first round at the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined to disturb that ruling.

The second and third rounds have concerned a separate lawsuit filed in federal court, where Republicans convinced a judge that it would violate the U.S. Constitution for officials to change maps so late.

The high court previously agreed to lift the judge’s preliminary order . The 8th Circuit on Monday instructed the judge to replace it with a permanent one. That’s the order now before the high court. The referendum organizer says it shouldn’t have been allowed.

“This Court’s stays are not invitations for a lower court to repackage the same relief and try again,” the referendum organizer’s attorneys wrote to the justices.

“Nor does the law permit the unprecedented disruption the Eighth Circuit injects here — particularly not on such a faulty basis,” it continues. “With voting already underway, the Court should grant this application before that becomes irreversible.”