The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Missouri on 21 September to hold its November House elections on the 2025 map, House Bill 1 (HB 1)1. Judges James Loken, David Stras and Lavenski Smith held that the 2022 map violates Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, and that HB 1, already used in the August primary, would confuse voters less. Chris Geidner of Law Dork wrote that the panel inverted the Purcell principle, the doctrine that warns federal courts off changing election rules close to a vote2.
Three earlier orders frame the ruling. The Missouri Supreme Court had suspended HB 1 pending a referendum. Judge Stephen R. Clark then issued a restraining order pointing the state at HB 1, and the US Supreme Court stayed that order on 10 September. The 8th Circuit's ruling is a separate merits decision reaching the result that stay had paused.
The panel stayed its own order until 5pm Central time on 28 September. On 22 September People Not Politicians and Richard von Glahn filed emergency application 26A388 asking Justice Brett Kavanaugh to pause it, and he set a 23 September response deadline3. It is the third time in three weeks that Missouri's map has reached the Supreme Court. Amicus briefs came from the Campaign Legal Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, from Florida, Texas and 20 other states, and from 110 Missouri voters. Missouri and Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, whom the state Supreme Court held in civil contempt on 10 September, filed against a pause.
Missouri began mailing overseas and military ballots on 18 September under the 2022 map then in force4. If the 8th Circuit's order stands, ballots already with troops and expatriates carry districts the state would no longer use. The candidate list certified on 25 August used HB 1's district numbers, so the order would put the certification back in line while putting posted ballots out of it. Missouri would then have to decide whether to reissue those ballots with the federal 45-day window already closed.
