Democrats Get One House Seat Back After Kavanaugh Greenlights Old Congressional Map

Democrats will notch one last win in the 2026 redistricting war after Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined to block the Missouri supreme court’s unanimous decision nullifying Republicans’ gerrymander of the state’s congressional map. The state will now revert to having two deep-blue districts rather than just one, as Republicans had wanted. Last year, the White House kicked off a national gerrymandering battle after asking Texas state lawmakers to redraw their congressional maps in order to give the GOP five additional seats. In response, California Democrats redrew their maps after voters approved the measure in a statewide ballot referendum, thus canceling out the Texas maps. Other red states like Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Louisiana followed suit, giving Republicans a cushion of about ten additional seats in the House of Representatives. With Justice Kavanaugh’s decision on Tuesday, however, the Republicans have lost out on one of their redistricting wins in Missouri. In an order, Justice Kavanaugh stated that he would not block the state supreme court’s decision after Republicans sued to use their new gerrymandered maps. After the legislature adopted the new congressional maps last year, a group seeking to overturn the map began gathering signatures to put a ballot question up to voters this November which, if successful, would force the legislature to revert to the map with two heavily Democratic districts. The Missouri secretary of state then said that he would not put the referendum on the ballot, arguing that voters cannot challenge a congressional map via statewide ballot initiative. Now, the state supreme court says that the new map can only be used if voters approve it in a statewide vote in November. “Because the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, [the new map] never took effect and was referred to the voters,” the state supreme court said in its unanimous decision. “The congressional districts the General Assembly established in 2022 remain in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election, and [the new map] will not take effect unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election.”Beyond Missouri, some analysts have wondered if Republicans may have stretched their own voters too thinly as they tried to make more districts fall into the GOP column. The prospect of a “dummymander” — meaning a gerrymander that backfires because of partisan voters being spread across several new districts — is a real possibility in several states. In Texas, Democrats are confident that they can hold on to at least three of the five seats Republicans attempted to draw to be more in their favor. In south Florida, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has promised to go after three sitting House Republicans whose districts are now less red than they were in 2024 as Governor Ron DeSantis and GOP legislators spread Republican voters into Democratic districts. In North Carolina, there is a possibility that the GOP could lose what was once a deep-red seat after the maps were redrawn in order to make a neighboring purple district currently represented by a Democrat more red.

Democrats Get One House Seat Back After Kavanaugh Greenlights Old Congressional Map

Democrats Get One House Seat Back After Kavanaugh Greenlights Old Congressional Map

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