Campaign Legal Center and ACLU Call on U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Missouri Supreme Court Ruling and Let Voters Decide on Gerrymandered Map

WASHINGTON — On September 7, 2026, Campaign Legal Center, the ACLU of Missouri, and the ACLU Voting Rights Project (VRP) filed an amicus brief in Hoskins v. Von Glahn, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a last-minute effort by the Missouri secretary of state to reinstate an unlawful gerrymandered congressional map. Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously upheld Missourians’ rights to hold a referendum on the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map, and held that until that map is voted on, the prior congressional map must remain in effect.

“Voters in Missouri collected twice as many signatures as needed to put the new gerrymandered map to a vote. Voters deserve to have their voices heard, not to be subject to a politician using delay tactics to force through a map that takes away their ability to be fairly represented,” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center. “We urge the Court to uphold the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling and protect Missouri voters.”

“Throughout this process, politicians neglected every path to provide Missourians with clarity and resolution, instead choosing intentional and unnecessary delay as their tactic to force an illegal map to thumb the scale of partisanship,” said Gillian Wilcox, director of litigation and policy for the ACLU of Missouri. “Hoskins held the people’s referendum in limbo for eight months only to then declare it insufficient based on a legal theory he assumed from day one. The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously rejected his claims, and the United States Supreme Court should do the same.” 

The Missouri Supreme Court had ruled on September 3 that the congressional map enacted in 2022 is the lawful map in Missouri, rather than the blatantly gerrymandered map passed in September 2025 by Missouri lawmakers after President Trump encouraged Republican states to redraw their congressional maps. After the legislature passed the mid-decade map, Missouri voters collected petition signatures to put the new map to a vote. The Missouri Constitution gives voters the power to vote to approve any law via referendum, and because of the referendum petition, the new map should have been put on pause until a vote occurred to approve it.

Instead, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to certify the signatures submitted for the referendum and engaged in a campaign of intentional delay to run out the clock. The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously rejected this effort, holding that the 2025 map “is not the law and has never been the law.” Secretary Hoskins is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Missouri Supreme Court and allow him to conduct the 2026 election under an unlawful map.

The amicus brief points out that the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent for more than a century has made clear that the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives power to the states to draw maps according to the laws of the state. That includes guaranteeing states the right for their citizens to vote on those maps in the form of referenda, if their state constitution permits it, as Missouri’s does. In fact, it is the secretary’s request to hold the 2026 election under an unlawful map that would violate the Elections Clause, not the unanimous ruling of the Missouri Supreme Court.

The brief also argues that Secretary Hoskins engaged in a cynical strategy of delay to avoid judicial review and claim it was too late for Missouri to use a lawful map, and the U.S. Supreme Court should not condone this scheme. 

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