A three-judge federal panel sent a jolt through the 2026 midterm election cycle Tuesday when it struck down a new Texas congressional map that could allow Republicans to gain five seats in the U.S. House.
But while the case could have tangential effects on litigation around Missouri’s new congressional map, the substance of the decision will almost certainly not impact the fate of that plan, Washington University School of Law professor Travis Crum said Wednesday.
That’s because the case revolves around whether Texas lawmakers racially gerrymandered the 2025 plan, which is prohibited under the U.S. Constitution. In the decision Tuesday, Judge Jeffrey Brown, whom President Donald Trump appointed to a district court in 2019, cited a Department of Justice memo demanding that Texas lawmakers redraw districts with majority nonwhite voting populations.
While Missouri’s map is facing a torrent of litigation, the claims in state court revolve around whether lawmakers violated the congressional redistricting process laid out in the state constitution. That includes whether legislators have the ability to redraw districts in the middle of the decade, whether the new map meets equal population standards and whether the districts are compact. In one of the cases, an attorney for the Missouri attorney general’s office also argued that the current Missouri map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander by protecting a majority minority district. But it’s unclear if Hanaway’s contention in that case will have any impact on state litigation on the new map.
Texas is appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court doesn’t block the lower court’s decision, Texas will use the map that lawmakers drew in 2021.
Crum said it’s hypothetically possible that how the Supreme Court handles the lower court decision could impact Missouri’s map. “But that assumes a lower court here enjoins the map,” Crum said.
“And we’re just not there yet,” Crum said,
Almost all of the litigation over the map is still pending in state circuit court, including whether lawmakers have the ability to redraw districts in the middle of the decade. No matter how Cole County Judge Christopher Limbaugh rules, the decision is expected to be appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.
While Crum said it’s possible that a Missouri Supreme Court decision could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the bar for that court to take on that case would be high.
“I do expect Missouri to take this to SCOTUS [the U.S. Supreme Court] if they lose in the state courts. But I wouldn’t expect SCOTUS to bite,” said Crum, adding that the Missouri litigation over the map is independent in terms of substance from the Texas redistricting case.
