Missouri Redistricting: New Map, Court Rulings, and 2026 Primary

Missouri’s congressional redistricting in 2025 redrew the state’s eight U.S. House districts mid-decade at President Donald Trump’s urging, converting what had been a 6-2 Republican delegation into a map built to produce 7-1. Governor Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 1 on September 28, 2025, after a special legislative session of under a month.¹ The Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the legislature’s authority to redistrict mid-decade and rejected challenges to the map’s shape. A citizen referendum to put the map on the November ballot is pending certification, and the new districts are in effect for the August 4, 2026, primary.

What the New Map Changes

The central move is the dismantling of the 5th Congressional District, held since 2005 by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. The old 5th sat largely inside Kansas City and Jackson County and leaned roughly D+23. Under the new lines, the district’s western boundary runs along Troost Avenue in Kansas City and the district stretches nearly 200 miles east into rural Osage and Maries counties.² Its partisan baseline shifts from D+23 to R+17, moving the seat from “Solid Democratic” to “Solid Republican.”³

The two neighboring Republican districts absorb pieces of Kansas City. The 4th District, held by Representative Mark Alford, now includes a thin sliver of Kansas City between the Kansas-Missouri border and Troost Avenue, along with eastern Kansas City, several Jackson County suburbs, and rural southwest counties. Its baseline moves from R+41 to R+20. The 6th District, held by Representative Sam Graves, takes in all of Clay County and more of Kansas City’s northern suburbs, including North Kansas City and Gladstone, at R+26.³

The map’s overall efficiency gap, a standard measure of partisan advantage, moves from R+10 under the previous map to R+21.³ Two districts were left largely unchanged, and every incumbent remains in a district they can run in. Proponents, including bill sponsor Representative Dirk Deaton, argued the new map splits fewer counties and municipalities than the one it replaced; the governor’s office called it “more compact” and “contiguous.”¹

How the Map Was Passed

Governor Kehoe announced on August 29, 2025, that he was convening the General Assembly for a special session beginning September 3, with redistricting and an overhaul of the citizen initiative process on the agenda. He framed the effort as making sure Missouri’s districts “truly put Missouri values first.”⁴

The push followed public pressure from Trump, who in July 2025 began calling on Republican-controlled states to redraw maps ahead of the 2026 midterms and posted on social media that the Missouri Senate “must pass this Map now, AS IS, to deliver a gigantic Victory for Republicans.”⁵ Similar efforts were underway in Texas, Indiana, and Florida.⁶ Missouri Republican lawmakers had rejected a nearly identical 7-1 configuration in 2022, in part out of concern that splitting Kansas City could make neighboring Republican districts more competitive.⁴

The Senate passed HB 1 on September 12, 2025, by 21-11 after Republican leaders changed chamber rules to cut off Democratic debate.⁵ Kehoe signed it 16 days later.¹

The Troost Avenue Boundary and Racial Gerrymandering Claims

Civil rights groups attacked the map’s treatment of Black voters in Kansas City, focusing on the use of Troost Avenue as the 5th District’s western line. Troost has long served as the dividing line between Kansas City’s white and Black neighborhoods.³ Critics said the map used classic “packing and cracking” techniques, concentrating some minority voters while dispersing others across rural districts.⁷

Cleaver said the map was drawn to minimize the voices of minority voters in Kansas City.² NAACP President Derrick Johnson accused lawmakers of using partisanship as a “vehicle to cloak your racial animus.”⁷ The ACLU alleged the map “starkly segregates Black and white neighbors” and submerges urban residents into “meandering rural districts.”⁸

Kehoe offered a different rationale, claiming the previous map was “vulnerable to a legal challenge under the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment” for lack of compactness. The ACLU disputed that, noting no such challenges were pending and arguing the new map “does not actually increase electoral opportunity for minority voters.”⁸

What the Courts Have Decided

At least seven legal challenges were filed in state and federal courts. The most consequential have been resolved in the state’s favor.

Mid-Decade Authority Upheld

Luther v. Hoskins, filed September 12, 2025, argued that Article III, Section 45 of the Missouri Constitution limits congressional redistricting to once per decade after a census.⁹ The Missouri Supreme Court rejected that reading 4-3 on March 24, 2026, finding “no express prohibition on mid-decade redistricting.” Judge Zel Fischer wrote that the word “when” in the redistricting provision “simply triggers a time that the General Assembly must legislate congressional districts and does not limit redistricting to that time only.”¹⁰ The three dissenters, Judges Paul C. Wilson, Robin Ransom, and Mary R. Russell, warned the majority’s reading would allow the legislature to redraw districts “repeatedly and indefinitely.”¹¹

Compactness and Contiguity Challenges Rejected

Voters represented by the Campaign Legal Center, the ACLU of Missouri, and the ACLU Voting Rights Project argued the map violated the state constitution’s compactness and contiguity requirements, pointing to Kansas City’s split into three “misshapen districts” and alleging one precinct had been assigned to two different congressional districts.¹² Consolidated on appeal as Healey v. State of Missouri and Wise v. State of Missouri, the cases were resolved by the Missouri Supreme Court on May 12, 2026. The court held that plaintiffs failed to prove the map “clearly and undoubtedly” violated the constitution; the trial court had found the 2025 map outperformed both the 2012 and 2022 maps on standard compactness measures including Polsby-Popper, Reock, and Convex Hull.¹³

Special Session Challenge Rejected

The Missouri NAACP argued Kehoe lacked constitutional authority to call a special session because no “extraordinary occasion” existed. A Cole County judge ruled against the NAACP in February 2026, and the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously affirmed on May 27, 2026. Judge Mary R. Russell wrote that Article IV, Section 9 grants the governor “broad constitutional discretion” and that “extraordinary” simply means outside the regular course of a legislative session.¹⁴¹⁵

Federal Attempt to Block the Referendum Failed

In an unusual move, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed a federal lawsuit on October 15, 2025, on behalf of the Secretary of State and the General Assembly, seeking to block the citizen referendum entirely by invoking the “independent state legislature” theory under the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.¹⁶ U.S. District Judge Zachary Bluestone dismissed the suit on December 8, 2025, ruling the federal court should abstain from interfering in “a referendum process created entirely by the Missouri Constitution and state law.”¹⁷ A motion to alter the judgment was denied on May 11, 2026.¹⁸

The Referendum and Whether the Map Stands

While the lawsuits moved, the political action committee People Not Politicians launched a referendum petition to put HB 1 to voters. The group needed roughly 110,000 signatures from six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts to suspend the law.¹⁹ On December 9, 2025, it submitted over 300,000 signatures to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins.

A dispute immediately arose over which signatures count. Hoskins has maintained that only signatures collected on petition pages dated October 14, 2025, or later are valid, because the petition form was not formally approved until that date. Signatures gathered between September 15 and October 13 were “scanned, retained, and organized separately” but not forwarded to local election authorities for verification.²⁰ Hoskins also admitted his initial ballot summary was “inherently argumentative and likely to create prejudice” in favor of the map, and a Cole County judge ordered the summary rewritten.²¹

A key question was whether simply filing the signatures automatically suspended HB 1. On May 12, 2026, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously said no. In Maggard v. Missouri, Judge Ginger Gooch wrote that the “plain language” of the Missouri Constitution does not provide for automatic suspension on filing, and that because certification was ongoing the court could not determine whether the petition was “legal, sufficient, and timely” enough to trigger suspension.²²

As of late June 2026, the referendum’s fate is unresolved. Hoskins has until August 4, 2026, the date of the primary election, to finalize verification and certification.²³ People Not Politicians has sued, alleging Hoskins is deliberately delaying to lock in the new map for 2026, with a hearing scheduled for July 15, 2026. Hoskins has separately sued the group in Cole County Circuit Court to close public records on the withheld signatures, arguing they are protected because they relate to pending litigation.²⁴ He has said he believes the referendum will ultimately reach the November 2026 ballot, but no formal certification has been issued.²⁵

The 2026 Primary Under the New Lines

The map is in effect for the August 4, 2026, primary. In the redrawn 5th District, Cleaver filed for a 12th term, but the swing from D+23 to R+17 makes reelection an uphill fight. Six Republicans and one Libertarian have entered the race, including state Senator Rick Brattin, former Boone County Clerk Taylor Burks, Kansas City attorney Brett Hueffmeier, and retired Army veteran Brad Patty. The crowded field reflects the district’s reach: it now spans 14 additional counties stretching toward Columbia, where the old district was contained within Clay and Jackson.²⁶

Local election officials in Boone, Jackson, St. Charles, and St. Louis counties are preparing for the primary under the new map while certification stays pending. If Hoskins certifies the referendum on August 4 itself, experts have warned the election results could face legal challenges or require court intervention.²³

A Note on State Legislative Districts

The 2025 redistricting applied only to Missouri’s U.S. House seats. State legislative districts use a different process entirely: separate 20-member bipartisan commissions for the House and Senate, with equal party representation, nominated by party committees and appointed by the governor. A plan requires 70 percent commissioner support to pass, and if a commission deadlocks, a panel of six state appellate judges draws the map. The Missouri Constitution prohibits mid-decade redrawing of state legislative lines.²⁷ Nothing in HB 1 or the recent court rulings changes that framework.

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2
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KOMU. Missouri Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Redistricting Special Session
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Votebeat. Missouri Congressional Map 2026 Election Secretary of State Denny Hoskins
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Missouri Independent. Missouri Secretary of State Sues to Close Records on Redistricting Referendum Signatures
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Missouri Independent. Field Expands in Missouri’s Gerrymandered 5th District
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