Liam McManaman | Staff Illustrator

The fight over Missouri’s congressional map has drawn national attention ahead of the November general election. After months of political maneuvering and conflicting court rulings, Missouri voters will ultimately decide whether to approve the state’s new congressional lines. 

On Sept. 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the third time that the state had to use its 2022 congressional map created after the 2020 census in the upcoming general election. The decision capped a long legal battle and means that Missourians will vote under a different set of maps in November than the ones they used in the Aug. 4 primary election.

“Voters deserved consistency and certainty, and not for the rules to be changed between elections. Nevertheless, Missouri will follow the Court’s order,” Governor Mike Kehoe, who championed the new map, said in a statement.

The conflict began in September of last year, when Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly passed a new congressional map in a party-line vote. The new lines split Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district and were designed to elect seven Republicans and one Democrat. 

The St. Louis-based 1st District, represented by Democrat Wesley Bell and home to WashU’s Danforth Campus, remained relatively unchanged. 

Michael Strawbridge, a WashU political science professor who studies Black representation, said that the new map would undermine minority representation in Missouri, where many Black voters are concentrated in Kansas City and St. Louis.

“Missouri is a red state with two blue dots. We’ve always been a two dot state, and that’s important because we have large minority populations in both those areas who we know overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic Party to begin with, and it has important implications for Black representation in particular,” Strawbridge said. 

Missouri is part of a broader national redistricting battle as Democratic- and Republican-led states across the country have launched mid-decade redistricting efforts in order to improve their respective parties’ chance of winning a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The redistricting process typically takes place every decade following the U.S. Census to accommodate population changes. In total, nine other states have redrawn their maps ahead of the midterms. 

Strawbridge described the wave of redistricting, which began when Texas Republicans redrew their maps at the urging of President Donald Trump, as a “tit-for-tat” national fight between the two parties. Travis Crum, a WashU School of Law professor specializing in voting rights, said that this kind of situation hasn’t been seen since the 1880s and 1890s.

“That’s a really odd phenomenon, to see mid-decade redistricting to the extent that we’ve seen in this decade,” Crum said.

After Missouri lawmakers approved the new map, opponents began gathering signatures in order to force a statewide referendum; Missouri’s state constitution provides the ability for citizens to gather enough signatures to halt legislation and put it before voters.

On Aug. 4 — which was both the deadline for his decision and the date of the primary election — Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins ruled that the petition was invalid. He argued that the Missouri Constitution did not allow referendums on congressional redistricting. The primary election proceeded under the new 2025 congressional districts. 

The Missouri Supreme Court overruled Hoskins on Sept. 3, ordering the redistricting referendum to be on the general election ballot and ruling that the old map had to be used in November. 

“Secretary of State Hoskins planned this chaos,” Crum said. “He dragged his feet, knowing that by issuing his non-certification in August, that you were going to spark this type of litigation.”

Hoskins and Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a former member of the WashU Board of Trustees, took the fight to federal court, arguing that the state could not use a different map than it used in the primary. The U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly rejected efforts to revive the new map, including twice blocking decisions by lower courts that would have allowed the state to use it. As a result, Missouri must use the 2022 map for the November election. 

“You may be voting for somebody else in the general election versus who you even could have possibly voted for in the primary, and that’s where it becomes, for lack of a better word, a sh*t show,” Strawbridge said.

Now Missouri voters, including WashU students registered in the state, will have the final say over which maps are used in 2028. The referendum, titled Proposition A, will appear on the ballot in November. A “yes” vote would approve the map for future elections, while a “no” vote would leave the 2022 lines in place.

An August poll from Saint Louis University and YouGov showed voters split on the measure with 35% supporting the new map, 32% opposed, and a third of voters undecided. 

Junior Devin Wallace expressed frustration over the spread of mid-decade redistricting and said he favored reforms at the federal level to limit the practice. 

“I think absolutely we should be caring about it because I think it’s really dangerous to go down the path of redistricting for either party. Both parties are acting just silly,” Wallace said.

First-year Howie Goemans said that part of the reason many WashU students aren’t paying attention to the issue is because they don’t feel ties to the area.

“I think a large portion of this campus comes from other states and other backgrounds, and they might not be as politically engaged with local politics in Missouri,” Goemans said. “I don’t think they really see WashU or St. Louis as their home. … So there isn’t really a connectedness to the surrounding area.”

Junior Ella McCauley, the co-chair of WashU Votes, said that the passing of Proposition A could have bigger implications for future redistricting and congressional representation for students. Students from Missouri voting using their home addresses may be voting in a different district than in the primary.

“Depending on how Proposition A passes, that could affect how districts are redrawn in the future, and especially if students, whether that be outside of St. Louis County or just in Missouri in general, feel connections to their districts and their current representatives or current leadership,” McCauley said.

Crum explained that future mid-decade redistricting could more directly affect St. Louis. The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, which Crum said means the Missouri state legislature could potentially target the 1st District in the future.

“This could be coming closer to home if the mid-decade redistricting wars continue,” Crum said.

McCauley emphasized the importance of WashU students being civically involved, regardless of whether the redistricting efforts directly impact them. 

“Even if they’re not directly affected by the new lines that are being drawn, I think that students should go out and inform themselves on the issues that are happening and make their voices heard,” McCauley said.