Missouri Redistricting Fight and Trump's Mail-Ballot Rules Both Hit the Supreme Court the Same Week

Since the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on September 3 to unblock the USPS mail-ballot rule one day before North Carolina started mailing ballots, two separate election fights have landed at the Court in the same 48-hour window, both testing how much control Washington and state legislatures can exert over how Americans vote in November.

Missouri's map goes to Kavanaugh

Missouri's Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed an emergency appeal Friday, September 4, asking the Supreme Court to reinstate new congressional districts backed by President Trump. The move came a day after the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously blocked the map and ordered a statewide vote in November on whether to keep it, according to the Associated Press.

The dispute traces back to a Republican-led legislature redrawing Missouri's map last September to help the GOP flip a Kansas City-area seat held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Opponents gathered more than 300,000 petition signatures to force a referendum. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected that petition on primary Election Day in August, arguing Missouri's constitution doesn't allow referenda on congressional maps. A lower court sided with Hoskins, but the state Supreme Court reversed him Thursday, ruling the petition was "legal, sufficient, and timely" and that the new map never legally took effect.

Hanaway's appeal calls the ruling unprecedented. "No court in American history has ever given such an extraordinary remedy, which inflicts unprecedented chaos on Missouri," her office wrote, adding the state is "genuinely unsure whether it can switch its governing congressional map in time to run a timely federal election." Missouri law sets a Tuesday deadline to finalize the November ballot. Justice Kavanaugh, who handles emergency appeals from the region, has asked map opponents to respond by Monday.

Backers of the referendum argue the whole point is giving Missouri voters a direct say over districts drawn specifically to benefit one party. The new lines were designed, by Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe's own account, to help the GOP hold its House majority. Whether a state court can order a mid-decade reversion to old maps after a primary has already been run under the new ones is now squarely a federal question, since no U.S. court has done this before, according to Hanaway's own filing. Trump weighed in on Truth Social, calling the state court ruling a return to maps "from a long time ago" and accusing courts of disturbing "the Election Process, as usual."

Mail ballots blocked again, this time with a whistleblower

Separately, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a fresh order Friday again blocking the Postal Service from enforcing Trump's mail-ballot rules, which stem from Executive Order 14399 and a final USPS rule published August 26. This is Talwani's latest in a string of rulings against the plan since summer, according to the Los Angeles Times.

What's new since the Justice Department's Thursday emergency petition to the Supreme Court: a Postal Service whistleblower has alleged the agency's new computer systems for the project are fundamentally flawed, and a top Postal Service official has acknowledged that a key online portal used to check voter data against mailing lists is unfinished, according to the LA Times. Talwani noted that election officials nationwide told her court it is "likely impossible" to comply with the rules, which "makes disenfranchisement more than likely, if not probable" if the Postal Service pushed forward anyway.

The rules would require states to submit full voter lists to USPS, adopt Postal Service-designed envelopes with individualized barcodes, and let USPS reject ballots that don't match those lists. New York Attorney General Letitia James said the regulation would "create confusion, unnecessary costs, and unacceptable risks for voters going into Election Day," since officials must redesign envelopes and build new data systems while already preparing to mail ballots.

Trump has said the rules are needed to stop voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Mail-ballot chain-of-custody and voter-list accuracy are real administrative questions. But Talwani found, and the LA Times reported, that USPS presented no evidence of fraudulent mail-in voting to justify the rule, and independent election experts cited in that reporting say there's no evidence such fraud exists at scale. This leaves the rule resting on a preventive rationale the government has not backed with data in court.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer's emergency application asks the Supreme Court to stay Talwani's August 27 order while the appeal proceeds. The Court has not yet ruled on either the mail-ballot stay request or Missouri's map appeal.

Both cases now sit before the same Court within days of each other, both driven by a Republican administration's midterm strategy, both opposed by Democratic officials and civil-rights groups, and both bumping up against hard state deadlines. Missouri's ballot-certification deadline is Tuesday. North Carolina and other states have already begun mailing ballots under the disputed federal rules. Whichever way Kavanaugh and the full Court move, a ruling in the next several days will determine which districts and which ballot procedures actually govern the November election, not just in Missouri, but potentially nationwide.