Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously blocked use of the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map in the 2026 midterm election, applying a state constitutional provision that allows voters to put new laws up for a referendum before they take effect. The ruling prompted a flurry of federal court activity this week: On Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected a shadow docket application seeking to halt the state high court’s ruling. Minutes later, a federal district court issued a temporary restraining order in a separate federal case, ordering that the new map be used in the general election. And then on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the district court’s order. This means that Missouri will use its original congressional map in November, as ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court, and voters will also consider a referendum as to whether to accept or reject the new map going forward.

In a year that has seen a dizzying number of legal fights over mid-decade partisan gerrymanders, this late entry by Missouri may well be the messiest. But after a flood of litigation over the past week — including contempt proceedings before the state supreme court after Secretary of State Denny Hoskins instructed election officials to use the new map — state officials have affirmed that the state will comply with the state high court’s order and use the original map this November.

Looking forward, what this saga underscores is that courts need stronger tools to address gamesmanship in redistricting and election disputes.

Indeed, what struck me most about the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision last week in von Glahn v. Hoskins was its sharp words about delay by the secretary of state and its rejection of his argument that it was too late for the court to act. Courts often hesitate to make changes to election rules as Election Day draws near. (Federal courts apply a doctrine known as the Purcell principle to this effect.) It’s an approach that’s understandable in some circumstances but can also incentivize shenanigans to evade judicial review while harming voters’ rights. The Missouri high court ruling models a different approach and was a strong statement by the court that it wouldn’t tolerate chicanery that undercuts Missourians’ referendum rights. But this saga should also prompt reflection about how courts can address these kinds of conflicts sooner.

The dispute originated in September 2025, when the Missouri legislature passed House Bill 1. The law sought to replace the state’s existing congressional map with a more extreme 7–1 Republican gerrymander, part of mid-decade gerrymandering efforts across the country.

Soon after, voters initiated a referendum campaign to reject the map. Under the state constitution, Missourians have a right to approve or reject acts of the state legislature via referendum. The state constitution provides that when voters successfully put a referendum on the ballot, the challenged law does not take effect until after voters approve it.

In December 2025, referendum organizers submitted more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state challenging H.B. 1. Under state law, Hoskins then had to assess the referendum petition and issue a certificate determining whether it met all legal requirements. If the petition was valid, a referendum on H.B. 1 would appear on the ballot.

Time passed. And passed further. As early as December 2025, Hoskins asserted in separate federal litigation that a referendum on redistricting was not authorized by the state constitution. But he held off on issuing a certificate on that basis — which would have triggered judicial review — instead going through a lengthy process of verifying petition signatures. And while state law offers an option to verify signatures through random sampling, Hoskins chose to require individual review of every signature submitted.

Finally, on August 4 at 4 p.m., an hour before the secretary of state’s statutory deadline to issue a certificate — and the day Missouri was holding its primary election using the map passed in H.B. 1 — Hoskins ruled that the petition was legally insufficient. Asserting that the state constitution does not allow for referenda on congressional redistricting plans passed by the legislature, Hoskins directed that the petition be kept off the ballot. A proponent of the referendum filed suit the same day.

After a lower court upheld Hoskins’s determination, the state supreme court took up an expedited appeal and concluded that the referendum was authorized under the state constitution. The court pointed to the constitution’s plain text, in which the people “reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly” and concluded that none of the exceptions laid out in the state constitution were relevant.

The result, the court explained, was that under the state constitution, “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law. There is only one valid congressional redistricting in effect — the congressional redistricting the General Assembly established in 2022.” Nor did the overlap between the primary date and Hoskins’s statutory deadline change the court’s analysis. The state constitution’s right of referendum came first, and a “later-enacted statute has no bearing on the constitution’s plain language.” As a result, the court concluded, the general election must be held using the district lines laid out in the 2022 map.

With respect to timing, the court took pains to point out that it was the secretary of state’s delay that “created the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties of which he complains.” Because “the secretary delayed certification until the last possible date and chose not to seek resolution of the constitutional question,” the court found his objections about the timing of the court’s ruling “wholly unpersuasive.”

Following the court’s ruling, congressional candidates and voters filed a new federal lawsuit, arguing that holding a general election using different maps than those used in the primary would violate their federal constitutional rights. This formed the basis for Tuesday’s temporary restraining order, with the district court concluding that the plaintiffs’ equal protection rights, as well as their right to have their primary ballot counted under Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, were likely violated.

Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court stayed this ruling. Significantly, the Court has both repeatedly tolerated last-minute changes to election maps by states, including voiding ballots that had already been cast, and rejected late-stage interventions by federal courts.

But putting aside the legal questions, it’s also undeniable that Missouri voters are facing a chaotic and potentially confusing landscape in the run-up to Election Day. Back in May, the state supreme court rejected a lawsuit seeking to block H.B. 1 while the secretary of state’s certification process was still ongoing. Had the court found a way to rule on this conflict at that stage, it could have moved the primary, for example, or set a hard deadline for certifying the referendum petition. In a world of election hardball, courts should look hard at how they can use their powers flexibly to protect voters.

Judges can take note when search warrant applications are based on unproven conspiracies and, when an election-related warrant is issued, protect election records, write former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and the Brennan Center’s Hayne Yoon.

Nine states have amended their constitutions to eliminate or narrow the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, writes University of Chicago Law Professor Adam Davidson. But changes on the ground have been slow.

State and local officials’ responsibility to aid in federal immigration enforcement is largely a matter of state and local law, despite the Trump administration’s contrary claims, write the Brennan Center’s Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot and Margy O’Herron and former Brennan Center intern Samson Tu.

The Alabama legislature has placed several proposed constitutional amendments addressing public education on the ballot this fall, writes the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Keisha Stokes-Hough. But none of them would alter restrictions on generating school funding, which Stokes-Hough argues are stifling the state’s education system.

The state supreme court previously required clarification of suspects’ intent when it was unclear if they had invoked their right to counsel, write former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz and supervisory assistant public defender Pamela Nagy. But now, the focus is on what an officer does, not what the suspect wants.

For the better part of a decade, Kansas courts and voters have rejected attempts to crack down on abortion. A recent ballot measure vote and abortion ruling were no different, writes the University of California Davis School of Law’s Mary Ziegler.

Issues on the dockets include voting by corporations, redistricting, National Guard deployment, and an abortion ban challenge by religious plaintiffs, writes State Court Report’s Sarah Kessler.

The Northwestern University Law Review published its symposium issue featuring essays by participants in the November 2025 Power of State Constitutional Rights symposium, cohosted by the law review, State Court Report, and the Brennan Center. The essays cover topics including economic liberties, child labor, search and seizure, court reform, pregnancy discrimination, and more.

State high courts decided the fate of a number of ballot measures proposed for the November elections, including allowing onto the ballot an amendment to congressional redistricting rules in Maryland, a package of election changes — including a voter ID requirement — in Arizona, and direct democracy protections in Missouri. The Michigan high court, meanwhile, refused to order onto the ballot a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voting. The Idaho Supreme Court also ordered a rewrite of the ballot language for an initiative that would legalize abortion. State Court Report has previously explained ways that state courts oversee ballot measures.

A Kansas intermediate court upheld the state’s ban on fusion voting — the practice of allowing multiple parties to nominate the same candidate for the ballot — against claims that the ban violates a political party, candidates, and voters’ state constitutional speech and assembly rights. An appeal to the Kansas high court is expected. State Court Report previously covered a similar New Jersey challenge.

Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Held that taxpayers were likely to succeed on their claim that a city’s plan to install statues of Catholic saints on a public building violates the state constitution’s bar against government subordination of one religion to another. The court ruled that its 1979 framework for that bar continues to apply, even though the analysis incorporates factors the U.S. Supreme Court has since abandoned for purposes of the federal Establishment Clause. // Boston Globe

State v. Garces, Hawaii Supreme Court
Held that the broader privilege against self-incrimination in the state constitution requires law enforcement to provide a warning that suspects in custody have the right to cease answering police questions and ask for an attorney at any time. // Hawaii News Now

Coleman v. State, Georgia Supreme Court
Announced, in a decision affirming a murder conviction, that the state high court will stop its decades-long practice of exercising direct appellate jurisdiction over all non-death-penalty murder cases as of July 2027. The intermediate court will now hear such appeals. // WRDW

You can find briefs and opinions from notable state constitutional lawsuits in our State Case Database.