The first case arising from last year’s special session for redistricting examines whether the state constitution allows the General Assembly to revise maps without new census data
BY: RUDI KELLER
Missouri Independent
The first case challenging Missouri’s gerrymandered redistricting plan to reach the state Supreme Court questions whether lawmakers had the power to enact the plan at all.
The court’s seven judges on Tuesday spent nearly an hour discussing the definition of a single word — “when” — and what it means in the constitutional directive to make congressional districts after each census.
The constitution states that “when the number of representatives to which the state is entitled” is reported after each census, “the General Assembly shall by law divide the state into districts corresponding with the number of representatives to which it is entitled…”
“‘When’ means ‘when’ and we think that language is quite clear,” said attorney Chuck Hatfield, who represents the plaintiffs asking the court to throw out the map passed in a special session last year.
Judge Zel Fischer, in one of the few queries from the bench, asked Hatfield to clarify what he meant.
“You are asking us to conclude that ‘when’ means only ‘when,’” Fischer said.
“It does,” Hatfield replied. “It does mean only ‘when.’”
Defending the map, attorneys for Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and the Missouri Republican Party said the provision is a directive to enact a new map after a census but does not bar redistricting at other times.
“This court has long held that the General Assembly has the power to act unless the constitution expressly takes that power away,” said Lou Capozzi, state solicitor general.
Missouri Republicans pushed through a new map for the state’s eight congressional districts under pressure from President Donald Trump, who is anxious to preserve the GOP’s thin majority in the U.S. House.
Republicans hold six of Missouri’s seats and Gov. Mike Kehoe called lawmakers into a special session in September to draw a map that targets the 5th Congressional District, held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City.
Cleaver filed for a new term on Feb. 24. Despite the case heard Tuesday and other pending lawsuits that could throw out the map, five Republicans have filed so far for the nomination to oppose Cleaver in November.
The map could also be stopped by a referendum petition seeking to force a statewide vote in November on the new map.
The directive that lawmakers revise district lines every 10 years was added to the Missouri Constitution by a state convention in 1944. Attorney John Gore, arguing Tuesday on behalf of the Missouri Republican Party, said the delegates had recent experience of lawmakers ignoring new census data and refusing to draw district lines for three decades from 1901 to 1931.
The language makes it a duty of the General Assembly to redraw lines after every census, Gore said. And delegates could have added language barring lawmakers from changing the districts between census reports, but they did not, he said.
“It would have been easy for the framers to prohibit redistricting except when there is a census,” Gore said.
Capozzi noted that Missouri revised district lines in 1877 and other states had changed districts without new census data in the years before the convention.
“There is zero historical evidence the framers were worried about mid-decade redistricting,” Capozzi said.
Other lawsuits filed in response to the redistricting plan challenge the details of the map, which signatures of 300,000 submitted should be checked for the referendum and whether the new map is in effect for this year’s elections despite the filing of the referendum petition.
Only one other case, filed by the NAACP to challenge Kehoe’s authority to call lawmakers into special session, has been decided in a circuit court. The NAACP lost that decision but is planning an appeal.
The case before the Supreme Court on Tuesday was written to answer the single question of when lawmakers are allowed to revise congressional district lines, Hatfield said.
“Redistricting is like cicadas,” he said. “It shows up noisily, it is very annoying to everyone and then it goes away for 10 years.”