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 11. 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.
