Who gets the last word in Missouri?

Good morning, and welcome to The Weekender.

Fourteen Republican lawmakers sent the Missouri Supreme Court a letter last week. It was not a fan letter. Hold Secretary of State Denny Hoskins in contempt, they wrote, and we may come for your jobs.

The court held him in contempt the next day.

Hoskins had told local election officials to use a gerrymandered congressional map Republican lawmakers passed last year. The Missouri Supreme Court had ordered the old districts kept in place while voters decided the new map’s fate. He went with the new one anyway.

His explanation was that a federal judge had told him to. The U.S. Supreme Court took that off the table Thursday morning, and by the time the state judges got around to him, Hoskins had reversed himself and told election officials to use the old districts.

The court said that was enough to purge the contempt. No punishment was imposed. 

As for the impeachment threat: It takes 82 votes in the House. Five of the 14 signers serve there. House Speaker Jon Patterson did not sound like a man about to go looking for the other 77.

“That’s not where my head is at this point,” he told the Kansas City Star.

A statewide official hauled before Missouri’s highest court was a first in living memory. The fight that put him there was not. It’s been going on for two years, and strip away the filings and it comes down to one question: What happens when voters decide something the people running the state didn’t want decided?

The answer, so far, is that they try again. And again.

In 2024, nearly 58% of voters approved a law requiring many employers to provide paid sick leave. Republican lawmakers repealed it a few months later. 

Also in 2024, voters approved Amendment 3, enshrining abortion rights into the constitution. This November they’ll vote on Amendment 3 again. This one was put on the ballot by lawmakers and would reinstate a near-total ban on abortion. 

Lawmakers then asked voters to make it much harder for citizens to amend the constitution. Voters said no, 80% to 20%.

Another group of Missourians gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures for Amendment 6, which would make it far harder for lawmakers to rewrite what voters approve. Hoskins kept it off the ballot until the Missouri Supreme Court, unanimously, put it back.

And then there was the map.

Republican lawmakers passed it. Opponents collected more than 300,000 signatures for a referendum to repeal it. Hoskins waited until the last legal day, declared the referendum unconstitutional and declined to say whether the signatures were enough. 

The signatures were enough.

Again, the Missouri Supreme Court overruled him. Again, unanimously. The constitution allows a referendum on “any act of the General Assembly” unless a specific exception applies. None does for congressional redistricting. 

What followed was a week of emergency appeals, contradictory orders and, at the end of it, a secretary of state standing before the state’s highest court explaining why he hadn’t done what it told him to. 

Here is the thing: Most of what led there was legal. Repealing a law is legal. So is proposing an amendment, appealing a ruling, arguing hard in court. The system gives elected officials plenty of ways to fight.

But eventually somebody has to lose. And lately, the people in charge in Jefferson City have been treating losses as suggestions.

So what are we left with?

In November, barring a Hail Mary in federal court this week, Missourians will vote in the districts drawn in 2022. They will vote on whether to enact the map drawn last year. They will vote on whether to repeal the abortion rights they approved two years ago. And they will vote on Amendment 6, which asks how much power lawmakers should have to change what voters approve.

After everything it took to get those questions onto the ballot, Missouri is back where this started. The politicians made their arguments. The judges made their rulings.

Now the voters get their turn.