Top Missouri Republicans ask courts to intervene in stalemate over congressional map
Three top Missouri Republican Party officials are suing the State of Missouri and its secretary of state, asking the courts to intervene in the political stalemate over the state’s congressional district boundaries.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Cole County, asks the court to step in as both chambers of the Missouri Legislature remain at odds over how to redraw district lines based on population shifts in Census data released last year. Missouri is one of the last states in the country without an approved congressional map.
If legislators are unable or unwilling to decide on a new map, the lawsuit argues, a judge should prevent Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft from using the 2011 map in future elections.
Use of the 2011 boundaries would be unconstitutional, according to the lawsuit, and significantly weaken votes from constituents in “overpopulated” districts.
“If the State cannot or will not enact a new congressional plan and map, then this Court should adopt its own congressional plan and map and extend or create a new filing period for such districts so as to ensure candidates can file in the proper congressional districts in advance of the August 2, 2022, primary election,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit notes that the candidate filing deadline passed this week without a decision on the map. It asks a judge to force Ashcroft to create a new two-week filing period after a new map is approved.
Republican Party Treasurer Patricia Thomas, Secretary Derrick Good and Curtis Jared, a member of the party’s state committee, filed the suit after it became clear that the Missouri House and Senate had re-entered a months-long gridlock over approving the map.
Thursday’s lawsuit was first reported by The St. Louis Post Dispatch.
The Missouri House on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected new congressional boundaries drawn by the Senate and, for a second time, asked to negotiate with lawmakers from both chambers.
The Senate had approved its version of the map on March 24 after weeks of Republican infighting over how far to go in drawing GOP-leaning districts for partisan advantage. The final agreement was a compromise among Republicans, including between GOP leaders and some members of the Conservative Caucus, a hard-right group of seven senators who had filibustered previous proposals.
The district lines preserve the state’s current mix of six Republican and two Democratic members of Congress, falling short of the Conservative Caucus’ goal of seven Republicans.
Some Senate lawmakers, including Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, have said that negotiating with the House would be the best move and condemned the Senate’s unwillingness to bargain. Those negotiations would happen in a conference committee, where lawmakers would develop a final proposal.
“I would say, definitively, anybody at this point who doesn’t want to go to conference is responsible for it going to court,” he said. “There may be people who want it to go to court. And I’m not going to try to assign motive for why that would or wouldn’t be.”
Others, namely Senate Democratic leaders and Bob Onder, a member of the Conservative Caucus, seem unwilling to budge.
“We’re not going to conference,” Onder said Thursday.
Thursday’s lawsuit is one of at least three that asks judges to take action where the General Assembly has not.
The map approved by the Senate consolidates the 5th District — held by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat — into the Kansas City area and eliminates its rural communities, which currently stretch into central Missouri.
It also significantly redraws the St. Louis-area 2nd District, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner. Instead of the indistinct blob that it is today, its new claw-like shape stretches from the St. Louis metro into southern Missouri, in hopes of making it more Republican.
And it places Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base in the same district.
