15SEP

Federal judge orders HB 1 back into use

2 min read

14:21UTC

Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark ordered Missouri to run the 3 November election on its suspended congressional map, hours after the US Supreme Court had declined to lift that suspension.

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Key takeaway

Clark ordered Missouri onto the suspended map, then refused to shield its secretary of state from the state court.

Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark of the Eastern District of Missouri granted four Republican plaintiffs a temporary restraining order on 8 September, directing the state to run the 3 November election on HB 1 ¹. Robert Onder and three other Republican plaintiffs brought the suit. A temporary restraining order is the fastest instrument a federal judge has, issued to hold a position for days rather than to resolve a case, and Clark issued his within hours of the US Supreme Court declining to disturb the state court's contrary ruling.

Missouri therefore had two live commands pointing in opposite directions on the same afternoon. The state court had struck HB 1 down and sent it to voters ; Clark ordered it used. The Eighth Circuit declined to stay his order on 9 September, holding that it lacked jurisdiction over a restraining order of that kind rather than deciding whether Clark was right.

Secretary of State Denny Hoskins then asked Clark to go further and enjoin the Missouri Supreme Court itself, invoking the All Writs Act, a statute that lets federal judges issue orders protecting their own authority. Clark refused on comity grounds, the principle that one court does not casually command another. He had given Hoskins the map he wanted and declined to give him cover against the judges who had taken it away, which left the secretary of state holding a federal order and no protection from the state bench that had suspended the law.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A federal judge and Missouri's own Supreme Court gave Missouri two opposite instructions on the same map in the same week. Judge Clark, hearing a case from Republican voters, ordered the state to use HB 1, the newer map state lawmakers had passed. Missouri's Supreme Court had already paused HB 1 and told the state to use the older 2022 map instead. When Hoskins tried to get Clark to also block the state Supreme Court from enforcing its own order, Clark said no. Federal judges generally cannot tell a state's own courts what to do, even when a related federal case is running at the same time.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Missouri's redistricting fight ran on two separate tracks at once: a state case testing whether HB 1 was validly enacted, and a federal case testing whether voters' equal protection rights required a particular map be used. Nothing forced those two cases into a single forum, so a federal judge and a state supreme court reached opposite conclusions about which map governs, in the same week.

That split-track structure exists because state and federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction over different legal theories arising from the same facts. Hoskins could win on one track and lose on the other, which is exactly what happened.

What could happen next?

Consequence
With Clark refusing to reach the state court, Missouri's map dispute stayed split across two separate judicial systems with no single forum resolving both at once.
Meaning
Clark's TRO gave HB 1 a second, independent federal basis beyond the legislature's own enactment, which is part of why the Supreme Court's later stay of that TRO mattered on its own terms.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. Section 2283, has barred federal courts from enjoining pending state court proceedings since 1948, with only three narrow exceptions; federal judges have applied that bar against state officials seeking to use the All Writs Act to override a state Supreme Court in redistricting and election disputes going back decades.

Counter-parallel: No positive parallel exists for a secretary of state successfully using the All Writs Act against his own state's highest court; the exceptions to the Anti-Injunction Act cover protecting a federal court's own jurisdiction, not rescuing a state official from an adverse state ruling.

Consensus view: The Purcell principle, the general reluctance of federal courts to reorder election rules close to a vote, cuts against Clark's own order, since it moved Missouri's map further from the status quo just eight weeks before the 3 November election.

Counter-view: Purcell applies unevenly in practice: courts invoke it to block changes that favour one side and skip it when the change favours the other, and Clark's order restoring HB 1, the map candidates were originally certified under, arguably preserved rather than disturbed the status quo.

Key tension: Whether Purcell measures distance from the election date or distance from what voters and candidates already expect, since Clark's order and the state court's suspension order cannot both claim to be the status quo.

Sources:CourtListener

Mentions:Missouri →

First Reported In

Update #17 · Missouri's election chief held in contempt

CourtListener· 15 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Missouri map suspended, sent to voters

The state court's suspension of HB 1 triggered the Onder plaintiffs' federal suit seeking to force its use.

Occurred 3 Sept 2026

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This Event

Federal judge orders HB 1 back into use

A federal district judge commanded the opposite of what Missouri's own supreme court had ordered, and the state's map changed inside a working day.

Led to

Court finds Hoskins in civil contempt

Hoskins cited the federal TRO in Onder as his reason for breaching the state injunction, producing the contempt finding.

Occurred 10 Sept 2026

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Supreme Court stays the Missouri TRO

The Supreme Court stayed Judge Clark's TRO two days after it issued.

Occurred 10 Sept 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cook Political Report

Cook Political Report published a dated House ratings snapshot on 11 September and changed no seat's rating, holding at 206 Democratic to 208 Republican with 21 tossups since its 3 September batch. Publishing without a change is a dated decision, not an oversight, leaving Republicans ahead on seats while Democrats lead the national vote by 6.6 points.

Department of Justice

A Justice Department official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that preservation letters like the one sent to Aguilar go to states the department is in active litigation against over incomplete voter registration lists. The department would not answer the paper's specific questions about the personal investigation notice riding inside the same letter.

Francisco Aguilar

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar publicly rejected Justice Department pressure on 12 September, days after a 4 September letter combined a records-preservation demand with a personal notice that he is under investigation. He said he will not fold until a judge orders him to, making his office's compliance a political stand rather than a routine filing.

Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri's state-track stay application alone on 8 September without referring it, then sent the separate federal-track application in Onder v. State of Missouri to the full Court, which stayed it on 10 September. His choice of which application to keep and which to share decided how much of the fight one justice controlled.

Robert Onder and the federal plaintiffs

Robert Onder and three other Republican plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark on 8 September ordering Missouri to use HB 1, then lost it when the Supreme Court stayed it on 10 September. Their federal route ran parallel to Hoskins's own reversal and ended the same way, with the 2022 map governing 3 November.

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians won Von Glahn v. Hoskins on 3 September, persuading the Missouri Supreme Court that their referendum petition stripped HB 1 of effect and sent it to voters as Proposition A. The contempt finding against Hoskins this week confirms their win held even after the state's chief election officer tried to reverse it.