September 22, 2026
SCOM Bags Overruled by Appeals Court in Missouri Redistricting Plan
Timothy Birdnow
Emmanuel gets the Cleaver!
Emmanuel Cleaver, he black Democrat - one of just a couple of Democrats holding Congressional seats in Missouri, is going to lose his s4at as a result of redistricting. This ruling by a state supreme court ruling has gone our way for once, and it sets up another showdown at SCOTUS, which is always up for grabs.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower Missouri court and the Missouri Supreme Court, greenlighting the state's new electoral map. It is likely this will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court soon.
SCOTUS had heard this case twice before and overruled the GOP. But they always overruled the state of Missouri on grounds that allowed them to try it again.
The Politico article (hardly friendly to the state's position) had this to say:
The Supreme Court’s first rejection of the GOP plan came Sept. 8, when Justice Brett Kavanaugh turned down an emergency appeal by state officials seeking to overturn the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision to stick with the map adopted in 2022 and used to elect the existing Congressional delegation.
However, within minutes of Kavanaugh’s order, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, granted a restraining order two GOP candidates sought against returning to the 2022 lines for the general election.
A challenge to Clark’s order eventually reached the Supreme Court, which put it on hold two days later. While no justice noted any dissent from the ruling, the justices also offered no explanation for it, which the 8th Circuit appears to have interpreted as leaving them free rein on the issue.
Notice how they keep saying "a Trump appointee, a Bush appointee" when if it were a Democrat ruling in favor of the Donks it would simply be "judge so-and-so".
That is how you show bias while pretending to be neutral.
At any rate the Supreme Court never ruled this map couldn't go forward, just that it didn't meet the criteria set down by the law.
I would add the Missouri Constitution is quite plain on the matter; redistricting cannot be done based on a popular vote, which is what the Democrats have been pushing. Ballot initiatives are not legal.
A number of state courts ordered an initiative to be put on the ballot anyway, including the state supreme court, but that is in gross violation of the Constitution of the state. Appelate judges have ruled thus, and it will not be on the ballot in November.
III Sec. 3 of the Missouri Constitution says:
(i) No redistricting plan shall be subject to the referendum.
I don't think it gets any plainer than that. This plan to put the new districting scheme to a public vote is clearly illegal.
Now, they might challenge the scheme on other grounds, notably the disenfranchisement of minorities in Cleaver's former district, and they might have a case. But to demand it be put on the ballot is clearly illegal and shame on the Missouri Supreme Court for ruling otherwise.
To the victor go the spoils. The Democrats as a party based their strategy on controlling big cities and trying to control the central government. They didn't care about the states so much as they saw them as increasingly impotent entities, mere provinces. But that attitude has come home to bite them; they lost control of districting. For a long time the GOP dared not challenge them on this, even though they had the power in most states to redistrict the Democrats out of power. But we had rules that forbade that, wih courts ruling that redistricting was unfair to minorities. Only now that the Supreme Court has ruled that race-based redistricting is not legal has the GOP found it's spine.
We were a Grizzly in a circus performance before, now we are wild.
At any rate the Democrats have discovered that control of the states is actually important since that means control of redistricting. Their scheme, to use the courts to neuter the GOP, has failed.
Missouri is an interesting case. Democrats focused on control of the big cities, but they also run big cities into the ground as they are corrupt. Missouri only has two big cities, and neither of them are that big anymore. St. Louis and Kansas City just don't have much clout in state politics. The outstate regions are are Republican (farm voters, a big squishy perhaps but still not crazy enough to vote Democrat) and it is the outstate area that controls the state. It's actually what Thomas Jefferson envisioned for America; a nation of yeoman farmers. He did not trust the cities. Missouri is much like Jefferson's vision.
It's what Illinois should be like too but Chicago is a behemoth that dominates state politics and so Southern Illinois, much like Missouri in many ways, is outvoted in Springfield and has no voice. (They should secede and join Missouri or Indiana but that would require state approval and it won't happen with the Chicago Way in control.) If Chicago were gone from Illinois the state would probably be a Republican stronghold like Missouri. Maybe they can find a way to kick Chicago out of Illinois? I favor giving it to Canada, personally.
At any rate it's getting too close to the election for another appeal to go to SCOTUS. We'll see if Brett Kavanaugh will reject this appeal as he did the appeal of the state to the SCOM ruling (Supreme Court of Missouri) just a little while ago on the grounds it was too close to the election.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:27 AM
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