The campaign seeking a public vote on Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map is asking a Cole County judge to do more than put the referendum on the November ballot — it wants the court to prohibit the state from using the map at all this fall.
What that would mean for the candidates nominated Tuesday in Missouri’s eight congressional districts remains a question the campaign cannot yet answer.
“This is a mess that Denny Hoskins created,” said Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing People Not Politicians, a political action committee that spearheaded the referendum campaign. “He intentionally delayed his certification. He caused this problem, and I look forward to seeing how he’s going to fix it.”
Secretary of State Denny Hoskins issued a certificate of insufficiency Tuesday afternoon, hours before polls closed, declaring the referendum petition unconstitutional without disclosing whether the more than 305,000 signatures submitted in December were enough to qualify.
People Not Politicians Executive Director Richard von Glahn filed suit in Cole County Circuit Court soon after the announcement.
The lawsuit asks the court to reverse Hoskins’ decision and to restrain him “from taking any further steps to implement or mandate the use of” the map drawn during last year’s special session. Hatfield said the second request is the one with immediate consequences.
“He doesn’t get to decide what is the law of the land,” Hatfield said of Hoskins’ repeated assertion that the new map governs. “The courts do.”
Pressed on what should happen to Tuesday’s winners, Hatfield offered three possibilities without endorsing any of them.
Because candidates are not required to live in the district they seek to represent, he said, courts could leave the nominees in place and run them in the old districts. Courts could treat the nominations as vacancies created by an improper election, to be filled by party committees under the statutory process. Or they could order a new primary.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway argues a new primary is impossible and that conducting the general election under different district lines would be unconstitutional.
In an opinion letter released Tuesday, she wrote that federal requirements to transmit ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before both elections, combined with the three-day period before primary results can be certified, would require at least 93 days to rerun the primary and conduct the general election.
There are 91 days between Aug. 4 and Nov. 3.
Hanaway also wrote that putting candidates before voters in November who did not emerge from a primary conducted in those districts would violate the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that House members be chosen by the people.
The stakes are concentrated in six of Missouri’s eight districts. The 2025 map left the 7th and 8th unchanged while splitting Kansas City three ways, and it transformed the 5th District from one Kamala Harris carried with about 61% into one President Donald Trump carried with about 58%. State Sen. Rick Brattin, endorsed by Trump the day before the primary, won a six-way Republican contest Tuesday with 44% and will face 11-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in November.
Hanaway argues that because the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause assigns the times, places and manner of congressional elections to state legislatures, a state constitution can strip that authority only through a “clear statement,” and Missouri’s contains none. Article III, Section 45 — which directs that “the general assembly shall by law divide the state into districts” — is the only provision addressing congressional redistricting, she wrote, and the more specific provision controls over the general referendum sections.
She further argued that redistricting falls within the constitution’s existing exceptions for laws necessary to maintain state institutions, and that allowing 5% of voters to suspend a map would violate the Guarantee Clause’s promise of a republican form of government.
Hatfield called the letter “an advocacy piece written for a difficult political position” rather than an objective legal analysis. He disputed that the clear-statement doctrine Hanaway invoked applies to Missouri’s referendum provisions.
The referendum campaign’s argument starts elsewhere in the constitution. Article III, Section 49 reserves to the people the power “to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly.” Another provision carves out two exceptions — emergency laws and certain appropriations.
The lawsuit also leans on Moore v. Harper, the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that redistricting is a legislative function performed under a state’s prescriptions for lawmaking, “which may include the referendum and the governor’s veto.”
Missouri voters have used that power on a map before: in November 1922, they rejected the congressional redistricting bill passed by the legislature.
But time is running short on the referendum. State law gives anyone challenging a secretary of state’s certification decision 10 days to sue. It also requires courts to move those cases to the front of their dockets and decide them “as quickly as possible.” An appeal can go directly to the Missouri Supreme Court.
And another deadline is looming: State law says no court can order an issue placed on the Nov. 3 ballot after Sept. 8, eight weeks before the election. That gives the courts less than five weeks to resolve the dispute.
Hatfield pointed to past cases resolved in days: a 2024 challenge to a sports wagering initiative’s certificate of sufficiency took roughly two weeks, and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered an abortion-rights amendment onto the 2024 ballot hours before that year’s cutoff.
“I expect the state to continue to drag its feet and attempt to obstruct and try to run the clock out,” Hatfield said.
Hoskins said Tuesday that if courts reverse him, he doubts judges would reinstate the map used in 2022 and 2024.
“I know one of the things that the courts would look at is how far down the road that we are,” he said.
Hoskins separately rejected a proposed constitutional amendment from the Respect Missouri Voters coalition, which submitted more than 367,000 signatures, on grounds that it violated the constitution’s single-subject and single-article limits. The measure would require ballot summaries to be clear and unbiased and would prohibit lawmakers from changing voter-approved initiatives unless 80% of both legislative chambers agreed to send the proposed changes back to voters.
The coalition said Tuesday it is “prepared to take every necessary legal action” but has not said when it will sue.
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