It wasn’t my intention to fire off another post so quickly, but the Missouri Supreme Court issued two unanimous decisions this week — both against the same Secretary of State, both on the same day — and together they’re too good to split into separate posts.
To state the obvious, my own politics affect my view of these cases. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal. In second grade, I was the only kid in my class supporting Bill Bradley for the Democratic nomination for President. I wrote a position paper in 2008 at my Catholic prep high school in favor of gay marriage. As a voter, I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a Republican, and I live in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, one of the bluest districts in the country. But back to the good stuff.
Case One: The Congressional Map Referendum
If you haven’t been paying attention: the current President, in an effort to hold the House of Representatives, encouraged “red” states to gerrymander in ways that would either strengthen conservative swing districts or carve up liberal ones. Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts in 2025, with the express intent of carving up the district represented by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II (not relevant at all, but Cleaver also gave the commencement address at my law school graduation in 2016) since 2004.
In response to the partisan gerrymandering, a group called People Not Politicians organized a petition drive to force a referendum on the new map, ultimately gathering more than 300,000 signatures, a number well above what’s required. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to certify the referendum for the ballot, arguing a congressional map isn’t the kind of thing voters get to referendum in the first place. Initially, a Cole County circuit judge agreed, ruling that Missourians don’t have the constitutional authority to veto a congressional map this way.
The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed, holding that Article III, Section 49 of the Missouri Constitution, which lets voters approve or reject “any act of the general assembly” by referendum, is broad enough to cover congressional redistricting. The Court noted the constitution specifically exempts maps drawn by independent bipartisan commissions from referendum, which only makes sense if legislature-drawn maps were covered by the referendum power to begin with. Because the referendum has enough signatures, the Court held the 2025 map was suspended as of December 2025, meaning Missouri will vote this November using the old, pre-2025 district lines, while the new map’s fate gets decided by voters at the same election.
This is great news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans. While polls indicate that Democrats are favored to win back the House of Representatives, the President and his allies have been trying increased their chances of holding the House through out-of-cycle, partisan gerrymandering.
Hoskins, in his infinite wisdom, did not take the loss quietly. In a statement afterward, he called the ruling nothing short of a “Constitutional crisis,” insisted no court has ever rejected a congressional map already used in an election, and vowed to keep fighting to “preserve our constitutional republic.” Hoskins went so far as to say he is prepared to “fall on my sword” to stop the state from turning into, in his words, another big coastal city. Subtle, it was not.
Case Two: The “Respect Missouri Voters” Initiative
The same day, the Court also ruled against Hoskins in an unrelated case, Harris v. Hoskins, involving a proposed constitutional amendment informally known as “Respect Missouri Voters.” If enacted, it would expand and protect Missourians’ initiative and referendum rights more broadly: making that process a “fundamental right,” letting courts revise misleading ballot summaries, and requiring a supermajority vote before the legislature could weaken or undo laws voters pass directly. Organizers gathered more than 300,000 signatures for this one too. Hoskins’s own office had approved the petition’s form back in 2025 and certified its official ballot title.
On August 4, 2026, about an hour before the statutory 5:00 p.m. deadline, Hoskins issued a “Certificate of Insufficiency,” declaring the petition “insufficient under the Missouri Constitution.” The certificate didn’t elaborate. He also tried to change the ballot title his own office had certified a year earlier, swapping in new language.
That created a problem, because Missouri law doesn’t allow the Secretary of State to declare a petition “insufficient” and walk away. By law, the certificate itself has to state the actual reasoning. Instead, Hoskins attached a six-page opinion from the Attorney General’s office and tried to incorporate it by reference, a technique trial attorneys (me included) often use to pull in previously filed documents. That works fine in motion practice before a circuit court judge; the Supreme Court was clear, it doesn’t work here. The Court held the statute doesn’t let the Secretary outsource that explanation to someone else’s memo, and because the certificate itself gave no reasoning, there was nothing left to review on appeal. Game over.
The Court didn’t stop there. Hoskins’s briefing raised concerns about what could happen if the amendment were approved, but the Court wasn’t moved, those concerns weren’t “ripe,” since courts don’t pre-judge what a law might do before it’s even been voted on. The Court also rejected his argument that the petition improperly touched more than one article of the constitution or covered more than one subject, finding it affects only Article III and relates entirely to one theme: protecting the initiative and referendum process itself.
Then there’s the ballot title switch, maybe the cleanest part of the opinion. Hoskins tried to vacate the title his office certified in September 2025 and swap in language that almost certainly would’ve sounded more alarming to voters. The Court held he simply didn’t have the authority. Missouri law gives the Secretary one shot to certify a ballot title, subject to a 10-day citizen challenge window. Nobody challenged it. Once that window closes, it’s final, even for a new Secretary who wasn’t in office when the title was first certified.
The Court ordered Hoskins to certify the petition as sufficient, restore the original ballot title, and get it on the ballot by September 8. It’ll appear as Amendment 6.
Why I find both of these satisfying
Procedural rules like “you have to actually state your reasons” can feel like technicalities, but they exist for a real purpose, so people know what they’re appealing and why, on a clock that doesn’t leave room for guessing games. Both opinions are clean illustrations of what happens when an agency tries to skip that step and hope the outcome speaks for itself. That it happened twice, to the same official, on the same day, is just a bonus.
Either way, in my view, today Missouri citizens won and Hoskins lost. Twice.
I like to law-nerd out over Supreme Court decisions, especially the ones I happen to agree with, but I promise not to spam your inbox with liberal propaganda or delve into politics too often, unless you ask nicely. That’s all for today, and probably this week. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
A special thanks to St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum, who has been reporting on this legal battle for some time. His story on the congressional map ruling is here: https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-09-03/missouri-supreme-court-referendum-congressional-map, and his story on the “Respect Missouri Voters” ruling is here: https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-09-03/respect-missouri-voters-initiative-petitions. He’s also a great follow if you have any interest in Missouri politics.
(Standard disclaimer: general-interest summary of public court opinions, not legal advice, and not my usual personal injury lane. For actual injury questions: hurtinstl.com.)
Cheers,
