Missouri’s mid decade redistricting debacle grew even more chaotic Monday when the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a lower federal court and directed the state to use a map drawn in 2025. The map was designed to push Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver toward retirement while helping President Trump maximize Republican advantages in the midterm elections.

That order collided with a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruling from early September. The state court concluded that the 2025 map could not be used unless voters first approved it through a referendum.

People Not Politicians, the advocacy group supporting the referendum, had satisfied the constitutional requirements needed to put the question on the ballot. Yet the federal appeals court argued that returning to the 2022 map would conflict with Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which governs the timing for choosing members of Congress.

The Eighth Circuit also invoked the Purcell principle, a Supreme Court precedent holding that election procedures should not change close to an election. That reasoning produced a glaring contradiction because the appeals court was itself ordering a map change as the election approached.

The ruling further tangled the Missouri Supreme Court’s own reliance on Purcell. Complicating matters still more, the U.S. Supreme Court had already supported the state high court twice without issuing reasoning clear enough to end the dispute.

On Tuesday, People Not Politicians and executive director Richard von Glahn returned to the U.S. Supreme Court. They requested clarification of its September 10 decision, which had failed to resolve the conflict among Missouri Republicans, the state Supreme Court and the Eighth Circuit.

The clash has emerged from a series of Republican mistakes in a state where the party effectively controls all three branches of government. Missouri Republicans remained committed to Trump’s redistricting push even as other Republican and Democratic states declined to pursue similar plans amid fears of confusion.

“Missouri has, in some ways, been a test case of ‘Can all of these branches of government really check one another to be coequals?’ And when the answer was yes, some politicians’ response to that is, well, then we need to eliminate this idea of coequal branches of government,” von Glahn told the Prospect.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice assigned to handle Missouri matters, did not provide precise reasoning that could have discouraged the Eighth Circuit’s intervention. The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision had been unanimous, with five Republican appointees and two Democratic appointees participating.

Allen Rostron, a constitutional law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, said he does not expect the Supreme Court to change course and support the Eighth Circuit. He argued that the controversy began with an effort to prevent Missouri voters from deciding the referendum before district lines were changed.

Rostron also described the Supreme Court’s instructions to lower courts as “cryptic,” but called the Eighth Circuit’s attempt to set a deadline for a Supreme Court response “presumptuous.” He suggested the justices could remind the appeals court to respect both the letter and spirit of the high court’s direction.

Further litigation could follow the election, particularly from candidates or voters claiming disadvantage from using the 2025 map during the primary and the 2022 map during the general election. Rostron remained skeptical that such challenges would succeed because the central issues had already been litigated.

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins was found in contempt for defying the state Supreme Court and ordering election officials to use the 2025 maps before the issue was settled. Although the referendum petition was completed in December, Hoskins waited eight months and certified it only one hour before his legal deadline.

With possible penalties looming, Hoskins eventually returned to the 2022 maps. Local election officials had received no additional instructions from his office after being told that the older maps were back, while military, overseas and absentee ballots were already being mailed.

Voters have also delivered sharp rebukes to Republican proposals. In the August primary, 83% rejected a referendum to phase out the state income tax, while 80% opposed replacing a statewide majority vote with congressional district majority votes for approving initiative petitions.

Republican state Sen. Curtis Trent, who sponsored the income tax proposal and had been positioned to become the Senate’s next majority floor leader, lost his primary. State Rep. Ed Lewis, sponsor of the initiative petition proposal, lost as well.

Opposition extends beyond Missouri. A Common Cause poll of 2,000 registered voters nationwide, plus 400 to 500 additional voters in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas, found large majorities across party lines favor banning mid decade redistricting.

Those voters included Democrats, Republicans, Trump 2024 supporters and independents. Rather than leaving mapmaking to state lawmakers, respondents supported independent commissions and average citizens setting the parameters for choosing their representatives.