Missouri Asks Supreme Court for One House Seat. California Moved Up to Five.

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway wants a stay before military ballots mail; Missouri's own high court sent the map to a public vote.

Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to revive a congressional map worth one more Republican seat, the state's emergency application says. The filing was reported by CNN, a day after Missouri's highest court blocked that map for the November midterm election.

The seat at issue sits in Kansas City. The 2025 map the state wants back splits the city along Troost Avenue and pushes the 5th Congressional District out into rural, Republican-leaning counties.

That redraw would put the district out of a Democrat's reach, KCUR reported. It's been held since 2005 by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, who won his last two races with more than 60% of the vote, The Associated Press reported.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday, September 3, 2026, that the state constitution doesn't stop voters from weighing in on a redistricting map, KCUR and the AP reported. Five of the court's seven judges were appointed by Republican governors.

The judges ordered the People Not Politicians referendum, carried by more than 300,000 signatures, onto the November ballot and put the 2025 map on hold. Missouri's House elections this fall run on the 2022 post-census lines.

Judge Ginger Gooch wrote that Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, made the mess he was complaining about: “These arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary's delay created the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties of which he complains.”

Opponents turned in their petition in December. Hoskins waited until August 4 — the last date available to him, and the day of the state's primary — to reject it, on the view that the constitution's referendum right doesn't reach redistricting measures. The state court threw that reading out.

In the appeal, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, asked the justices to resolve the case by September 14, leaning on the federal deadline for mailing military and overseas ballots, and warned of “unprecedented chaos” without a stay. The court told the plaintiffs who sued over the map to answer by midday Monday, September 7, 2026.

The California side of the arithmetic

Los Angeles voters are already on the other end of this ledger. Proposition 50, approved November 4, 2025 with 64.4% of the vote, redrew California's congressional lines, and the campaign behind it and news accounts put the shift at as many as five Republican-leaning seats turned Democratic-leaning.

Missouri's blocked map moved one seat the other way. All of it runs against a Republican majority of a few seats in the U.S. House.

The same justices have already touched both states. CNN reported that the court let Texas use a Republican-friendly map and let California use one that helps Democrats. It turned down Virginia officials in May. Earlier this year it cut back a major piece of the Voting Rights Act, a ruling that set off fresh redistricting in Republican states across the South, the outlet reported.

Cleaver, whose district the map would have dismantled, said the people should choose their politicians, not the other way around. President Donald Trump, who pushed Republican-led states into mid-decade redistricting, attacked the state court's decision in a social media post Thursday.

Missouri's ask is a stay, not a ruling on the map's merits.

Asking isn't winning. The state wants an answer by September 14, and the justices haven't said whether they'll give one.

Source: cnn.com, retrieved September 6, 2026.