Kavanaugh won’t revive Missouri’s GOP-friendly congressional map for midterms

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday refused to lift a block on Missouri’s new congressional map , which was poised to give Republicans a pickup opportunity in November.

Missouri Republicans hoped to return to the new 7-1 House map favoring them after the Show Me State’s top court ruled officials must revert to their its existing GOP-leaning 6-2 House map for the midterm elections.

Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Trump, handles emergency matters arising from Missouri by default. His one-sentence order declining to intervene contained no explanation.

It appeared to be a setback for Republicans, who had hoped to dismantle and flip a Kansas City-area seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D).

But the battle experienced another twist, however, when a federal judge separately ruled on Tuesday that changing maps so late would “wreak havoc.”

That judge, in response to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.), has temporarily ordered officials to continue implementing the GOP-leaning 7-1 House map that Republicans are pushing for.

“Widespread voter confusion would inevitably follow,” wrote U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark, an appointee of President Trump.

The dueling litigation in the state and federal courts does not make it immediately clear which congressional map will ultimately be used in November and introduces complications in Missouri on who qualifies to run for the general election, creating headaches for election officials and candidates alike.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said the state will follow Clark’s directive to move forward with the GOP’s favored 7-1 design.

“We appreciate Judge Clark’s support of the rights of Missouri voters, and intend to comply with this federal ruling. We maintain that changing the congressional map in between the primary and general elections is simply not feasible and profoundly unjust to Missouri voters,” Hanaway said in a statement.

Missouri Republicans have increasingly made that argument with less than 60 days before the election. They’ve warned that reverting to the old 6-2 design injects chaos in the state’s election system.

It marks the latest chapter of the mid-decade redistricting war to have reached the Supreme Court. Trump and national Republicans have pressured GOP-led states to redraw their House maps ahead of November as the party braces for a challenging midterm environment.

The party is looking to create pickup opportunities to cushion any potential blows Republicans might receive in November.

Previously, the Supreme Court revived a GOP-friendly map in Texas that had been struck down as a racial gerrymander but declined to restore a map that Virginia Democrats passed to combat it.

Unlike Texas, state judges in both Virginia and Missouri declared the redistricting efforts in violation of procedural requirements in each state’s constitution. Lawmakers then tried to convince the Supreme Court their cases raised federal concerns.

In Missouri, Republicans appealed a unanimous ruling from the state’s top court that the state’s new congressional map would not immediately go into effect. Instead, the state’s high court ruled at the time that the coalition behind efforts to put the map to a referendum in November would be allowed to have its measure placed on the ballot, meaning the map would not go into effect unless voters approved it in the fall.

“The Missouri Supreme Court made the right call in this case and Justice Kavanaugh was right to deny Missouri’s attempt to avoid the ruling of its highest court,” said Abha Khanna, a partner at Elias Law Group, a Democratic-aligned law firm that represented the referendum organizer.

“The state constitution is clear that Missourians should get the final word on whether their congressional map can undergo an extreme mid-decade gerrymander at President Trump’s request, and now they will,” Khanna added. “This is a win for democracy and for the hundreds of thousands of Missourians who signed a petition to make sure they would have a chance to weigh in on the gerrymandered HB 1 map.”

Republicans are still poised to pick up House seats in states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina where new maps were put in place ahead of the midterms. Democrats responded in kind and are set to notch wins in California and Utah.