A federal appeals court, relying on its higher constitutional rank than a state supreme court, issued a new ruling Monday in a highly complex dispute over this year’s congressional election.
The ruling only applies to one state, Missouri, and could directly affect only one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. But the new decision has the potential to set a significant new election law precedent.
The 40-page opinion, by a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is probably now on its way to an even higher-ranking court – the U.S. Supreme Court. Eleven days earlier, that Court seemed to have settled this very case. With time running short for state officials to prepare for the November 3 election, that ruling appeared to be the last word. The nine Justices had sided unanimously with the Missouri Supreme Court — the same tribunal that the Eighth Circuit upstaged Monday.
The only way to explain this turn of events appears to be that the U.S. Supreme Court failed to explain its one-page order on September 10. In the absence of guidance from the Justices, the Eighth Circuit panel treated the case as a new dispute, freshly before it, with the power to issue a fully explained result – at its level within the federal judicial hierarchy. It put its ruling on hold for a week, to allow for an appeal to the Justices in Washington by a voting rights group that had won in the Supreme Court but had lost in the appeals court Monday. That group said it would file a new appeal to the Court.
Election officials in Missouri cannot yet be sure which election districts to use for on November 3 to fill the state’s eight U. S. House seats.
The Eighth Circuit ordered the state to use maps aimed at giving Republicans a seven-to-one advantage over Democrats. The maps were drawn in 2025 by the Republican-controlled state legislature, answering President Trump’s demand to flip district lines to help Republicans shore up their narrow U. S. House majority. The Missouri Supreme Court had ordered the use of maps drawn in 2022 and used previously, which resulted in the election of six Republicans and two Democrats.
The three judges on the Eighth Circuit Court were unanimous in mandating the use of the newer, GOP-favoring maps. Two of the judges joined in a 35-page opinion that settled on those maps as constitutionally required. The third judge wrote five pages to make a separate point. He argued that the challengers of the 2025 maps had no right to sue, because their rights would not be harmed. In effect, that was a vote in favor of the 2025 district lines.
The constitutional ruling hinges on the fact that Missouri used the 2025 maps in the state’s August 3 primary election. The principle is simply stated: if a state uses one set of maps to choose party candidates in a primary election, it is unconstitutional to use a different set of maps in the general election to pick the final winners, especially when the maps place a significant number of voters in different districts.
The ruling was based on a clause in the U.S. Constitution that requires elections for the House of Representatives to be held every two years. Historically, that clause has been interpreted to mean that qualified voters must be allowed to take part in all House elections, both primaries and the general election.
What was new about the conclusion the two judges reached Monday was that the Constitution requires a “defined constituency” – that is, the same group of voters — to be eligible to vote in both primary and general elections. “The Constitution,” the opinion said, “requires continuity in the constituency throughout all stages of a single election. Changing district lines between the primary and general election prevents an affected voter from participating in either district’s complete procedure of choice.” The two judges relied on estimates that under the Missouri Supreme Court ruling, about one out of every four primary voters would vote in different districts on November 3.
The appeals court panel insisted that it was not passing upon the ruling of the state Supreme Court. The panel said its ruling was confined to issues of federal law, while the state’s highest court had relied on state law.
The state court ruled that the 2025 maps had never been legal under the Missouri constitution, because they are the subject of a referendum on the November 3 ballot. That referendum will go ahead as planned. If voters reject the 2025 maps, it will be up to various courts to decide the future of congressional districting in the state.
While not specifically overruling what the state Supreme Court had done, the Eighth Circuit made it explicitly clear that it expected the state court to abide by the new ruling. The two judges cited the Constitution’s Article VI (the Supremacy Clause) which makes the federal Constitution and federal laws the “supreme law of the land,” out-ranking state law to the contrary.
The two judges wrote: “Under the Supremacy Clause, the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision to suspend the 2025 map must yield to the Constitution’s prohibition on using a congressional district map in the general election different from the congressional district map in the primary election.”
Their ruling expressed confidence that state election officials would be able to take the steps necessary to use the 2025 districts for voting in the election that will occur 41 days from yesterday.
