By Jason Hancock | Editor-in-Chief
Good morning, and welcome to The Weekender.
There are rough months in politics.
And then there are months when you get summoned before the Missouri Supreme Court, found in contempt, sued repeatedly, accused by a former employee of retaliating against him for raising concerns about misconduct and singled out for criticism by the highest court in the nation.
Denny Hoskins had the second kind.
For Missouri’s secretary of state, September brought one setback after another, most of them tied to the GOP push to gerrymander the state’s congressional map.
Opponents gathered enough signatures to force a referendum. Hoskins waited until an hour before a statutory deadline and then refused to put it on the ballot.
September began with the Missouri Supreme Court ruling unanimously that the referendum was lawful, ordering it onto the ballot and declaring that the November election should be held using the 2022 congressional map.
From there, the legal fight became a blur.
Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined.
A federal judge in St. Louis sided with Republicans and ruled the gerrymandered map was the only one that could be used in November. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened and once again blocked use of the map, just as the Missouri Supreme Court held Hoskins in contempt for not following its orders.
Meanwhile, the lawsuits kept coming.
Five voters filed a proposed class action seeking roughly $80 million over Hoskins’ handling of the referendum. Days later came a second class action, filed on behalf of voters who cast primary ballots in congressional districts different from the ones they’ll vote in come November.
Then, unrelated to the map, Hoskins’ former director of election integrity filed a lawsuit alleging Hoskins fired him after he raised concerns about misconduct inside the office.
Three lawsuits in less than a week. A contempt finding. Two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And the map fight still wasn’t over.
Then a federal appeals court sided with Republicans. It was the best news Hoskins had all month.
It lasted four days.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in again. Unanimously, it ruled that the gerrymandered map was done for this year.
In that ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court also addressed the question hanging over this entire mess:
Who bears responsibility for the electoral chaos?
Weeks of competing maps. Fears about absentee and military ballots being tossed out. Voters in 28 counties facing the prospect of casting general-election ballots in different congressional districts than they had in the August primary.
Missouri Republicans, Hoskins included, pointed the finger at the state Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court laid the blame at Hoskins’ feet.
Months before the August primary, Missouri’s Supreme Court warned Hoskins that the 2025 map would never take effect if the referendum petition held up.
Hoskins, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote on Friday, “was well aware” that using the new districts in the primary carried “significant risks.”
“The secretary nonetheless chose to proceed.”
So after all of that, Missouri wound up exactly where it started.
The old map. The same eight districts.
Hoskins did not.
After helping put the system through a yearlong stress test, he ends September as the one official a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held responsible for it.
(Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)
by Rudi Keller
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday drove a stake through the heart of Missouri’s undead congressional map, ordering it be buried for the year and for voters to cast ballots in the districts they’ve used the past two election cycles.
(Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)
by Jason Hancock
If voters reject the gerrymandered map in November, a second ballot measure could require 80% legislative support and another statewide vote for lawmakers to pass another map prior to the next census.
by Anna Spoerre
The campaign to keep Missouri’s abortion rights amendment in place has so far out raised the campaign to reinstate a ban about 7 to 1, in part because of $5.3 million from the Fairness Project, a D.C.-based nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors.
by Steph Quinn
A Kansas City plaintiff is among five Medicaid recipients and six medical organizations arguing a federal rule unlawfully narrows exemptions for adults with serious medical conditions.
by Annelise Hanshaw
The Missouri Supreme Court is weighing whether a 2022 law making it a crime for school employees to provide students with “explicit sexual material” violates constitutional free speech protections.
by Ariana Figueroa
A vast and growing network of artificial intelligence-driven Flock cameras could violate constitutional privacy rights, U.S. senators on a Judiciary Committee subcommittee said during a Wednesday hearing.
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