Catherine Hanaway is tied to Missouri's redistricting fight after the US Supreme Court rejected a Republican request to force the state to use new congressional maps, then a federal judge ordered those maps used minutes later. The back-to-back rulings put Missouri election officials under competing court commands as the state moves toward its congressional elections.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the Supreme Court's six-word order on Tuesday evening: "Application (26A304) denied by Justice Kavanaugh." That denial came after Republicans and Missouri's Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins went to the court immediately after the Missouri Supreme Court effectively halted a 2025 state law last Thursday.
Denny Hoskins and the 2025 map law
The Missouri Supreme Court's action blocked a 2025 state law that would have redrawn Missouri's congressional maps to give Republicans an extra seat in the US House. Hoskins and Republicans responded by seeking emergency action from the US Supreme Court, making the dispute one of two Missouri cases now moving through the courts, Hoskins v. von Glahn and Onder v. Missouri.
That sequence mattered because the appeal was not just about abstract map lines. It was about whether Missouri would proceed under the old maps or under a new plan that Republicans favored while the litigation continued.
Judge Stephen Clark's order
Minutes after Kavanaugh denied the request, Judge Stephen Clark ordered Missouri to use the GOP-friendly maps. Clark's case is on appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and the lead plaintiff in that case is a Republican member of Congress.
The timing created a direct clash: the US Supreme Court had refused to force the new maps into place, but Clark ordered the state to use the same maps anyway. For Missouri election officials, that means the immediate task is not a policy debate but deciding which court command controls the next steps in the election process.
Missouri's election schedule
The fight sits inside a broader Republican push to redraw congressional maps before the midterms. Ian Millhiser has described the dispute as part of unusually chaotic preelection litigation, and election officials may have to work through competing orders over the next two months.
For voters, the practical issue is straightforward: the map being used for Missouri's upcoming congressional elections is still being litigated in court, and the outcome will turn on how the Eighth Circuit handles Clark's appeal.
