By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
For the third time, Missouri's congressional map is back before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the clock is running toward next year's midterms.
A federal appeals court has sided with Republicans seeking to use district boundaries redrawn last year — lines critics say were engineered to hand the GOP an added seat in the state's congressional delegation. The ruling clears the way, for now, for the newly drawn map to stand, but opponents are asking the Supreme Court to intervene before it takes effect in an election cycle.
This is not a new fight. Missouri's map has already bounced to the high court twice before over the same basic dispute: whether the redrawn boundaries unlawfully dilute the voting power of certain communities or simply reflect the state legislature's prerogative to draw its own lines. Each trip to the justices has left the underlying question — who gets to draw the map, and by what limits — unresolved.
What's different this time is the calendar. With midterm primaries approaching, any further delay in a final ruling raises the odds that Missouri could hold 2026 elections under a map that is still, legally speaking, in dispute. Redistricting fights in other states have shown how a late-arriving court order can force last-minute changes to filing deadlines and ballot printing.
The Supreme Court has not said when, or whether, it will take up the case for full review. Until it does, the redrawn lines - and the partisan advantage they were built to deliver - stand.
Read the footnotes. The story's always in the footnotes.
— Compiled from reporting by The New York Times and ABC News.
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