“…This Court need not rescue the Secretary from a timing problem of his own making…”
Denny Hoskins (r) [2023 file photo].
Today, at the United States Supreme Court, Denny Hoskins (r) gets called out in the respondent’s opposition:
[….]
INTRODUCTION
The Emergency Application for Stay does not present a real emergency, and it does not actually request a stay. Applicants, by their own admission, waited as long as possible to manufacture the present dispute over Missouri’s congressional districting map. See App. 739a (Missouri’s Attorney General publicly proclaiming that “delay works in our favor”). After the General Assembly passed HB 1, a mid-decade redistricting bill, voters timely submitted a valid referendum petition, which—by operation of Missouri law—prevented HB 1 from taking effect. As the Missouri Supreme Court explained, “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law.” App. 12a n.8. “[T]he congressional districts the General Assembly established in 2022 remain in full force and effect for the November 2026 election.” App. 13a.
Yet Missouri’s Secretary of State waited until the last possible day—and only after he had implemented HB 1 in the congressional primary—to object to the referendum, in the hopes of running out the clock on the judiciary’s tolerance for a last-minute reversion to the 2022 districts. Now that the Missouri Supreme Court has rejected his gambit, he asks this Court to deliver him the political victory to which he was never entitled under the Missouri Constitution. This Court cannot and should not reward the Secretary’s scheme to outsmart Missouri voters, Missouri law, and the Missouri Supreme Court by granting Applicants the extraordinary relief they seek.
Even considering Applicants’ request would require this Court to disregard the ordinary limits on its review of state-court judgments. The Missouri Supreme Court expressly held that the Secretary “waived and abandoned” his federal objections by failing to preserve them in the manner Missouri law requires. App. 5a n.5. Under this Court’s settled adequate-and-independent-state-ground doctrine, that state procedural ruling ends the matter: this Court does not review federal claims barred on an adequate and independent state-law ground. See Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 260–61 (1989).
If Applicants clear that hurdle, the next problem is the request itself: a stay will not provide the relief Applicants seek. What Applicants really seek is a green light from this Court to allow the Secretary to violate the Missouri Constitution by implementing HB 1, notwithstanding the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling that HB 1 is not and never has been the status quo under Missouri law. But that extraordinary request would require an injunction—not a stay—relief Applicants have not sought, and which requires an exceptionally demanding showing Applicants cannot make. See Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 428–29 (2009).
Nor do the merits provide any grounds for relief. Applicants’ Elections Clause theory runs headlong into more than a century of precedent recognizing that state constitutional referendum procedures may constrain congressional-redistricting legislation. And their theories under the Equal Protection Clause and Article I, Section 2 ask this Court to recognize a right no precedent confers: a guarantee to preserve every consequence of a primary vote through November.
Equity does not support a stay where, as here, the applicants both created the alleged problem and cannot show that a stay is necessary to solve it. This Court need not rescue the Secretary from a timing problem of his own making—much less by authorizing use of a map Missouri’s highest court has held has never been law. The application should be denied.
[….]
An Amicus brief:
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INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE
Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (the “Secretary”) asks this Court to second guess the Missouri Supreme Court’s application of Missouri law and its rejection of his transparent scheme to deprive Missourians of their constitutional referendum right. Under fundamental principles of federalism, this is plainly improper: Missouri’s highest court, not this Court or any other, is the final arbiter of the meaning of that state’s constitution and laws. Unsurprisingly given the circumstances, the Secretary can offer only the flimsiest pretexts for federal intervention: an Elections Clause theory that is foreclosed by precedent; claims of “disenfranchisement” that cannot withstand scrutiny; and a Purcell-inflected argument that ultimately hinges on the fact that the Missouri Supreme Court—having correctly identified the Secretary himself as the cause of the “federal-election-administration disaster” he hyperbolically proclaims—balanced the equities in a way the Secretary simply does not like. His disappointment is not, of course, a valid basis to invoke this Court’s emergency power and stay the Missouri Supreme Court’s injunction.
Nor can the Secretary ignore Missouri law and ask this Court to allow enforcement of House Bill 1 (“HB 1”), a congressional map that never took effect and thus, in a legal sense, does not exist. The Missouri Supreme Court held that “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law,” App. 12a n.8, because a “measure referred to the people shall take effect when approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon, and not otherwise,” Mo. Const. art. III, § 52(b) (emphasis added). Crediting the Secretary’s insistence that the November general election be conducted under the HB 1 map just because it was used in the August primary would double down on a lawless act and reward the Secretary’s guile. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Further use of HB 1 would deny Missouri voters their “share of the [legislative] power.” State ex rel. Barrett v. Dallmeyer, 245 S.W. 1066, 1068 (Mo. 1922). Under the Missouri Constitution, the people “reserve[] a share of the legislative power for themselves …. to serve as a check on the legislature.” No Bans on Choice v. Ashcroft, 638 S.W.3d 484, 489 (Mo. 2022) (emphasis added). Enforcing referred legislation before Missourians vote to approve it would not merely undermine their constitutional referendum right but vitiate it altogether.
As qualified Missouri voters who signed the HB 1 referendum petition and plan to cast ballots in the upcoming midterms—both to approve or reject HB 1 and to elect members of Congress—Amici Curiae Jake Maggard and Gregg Lombardi (“Amici”) have an undeniable interest in the outcome of the Secretary’s pending stay application and urge this Court to deny it. After signed referendum petitions were submitted late last year, the Secretary embarked on an orchestrated (and publicly acknowledged) campaign to force use of the HB 1 map by manipulating the statutory certification process. Confronted with such conduct, each Amici has a personal stake in safeguarding the right to cast a meaningful vote in the HB 1 referendum—and in ensuring that the people’s constitutionally reserved share of the legislative power is not held captive to partisan machinations.
While Amici share the referendum and voting rights of their fellow Missourians, their interest here is particularly compelling since they themselves litigated issues now before this Court. In December 2025, once the Secretary’s plan to use HB 1 in this year’s midterms became apparent, Amici filed suit in Missouri state court under the theory that HB 1 was suspended as an operation of law when signed referendum petitions were timely submitted. The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately disagreed with Amici on the particular mechanism of suspension, concluding in May of this year that, until the Secretary completed his process for verifying the sufficiency of the submitted petitions, “it [wa]s impossible to say … whether the December 9 referendum petition filing was ‘legal, sufficient, and timely’ and, therefore, whether HB 1 went into effect on December 11 or whether HB 1 was referred to the people as of December 9 and can only go into effect when approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon.” Maggard v. State, 733 S.W.3d 411, 420 (Mo. 2026). The Maggard decision put the Secretary on notice months ago that the enforceability of HB 1 hinged on his completion of the certification process—an admonition he chose to ignore. See infra pp. 5–6, 13–14. Amici, for their part, warned even in May of this year that the Secretary “would later invoke the [Purcell] doctrine in an eleventh-hour gambit to deny relief.” Reply Brief of Appellants at 27 n.14, Maggard v. State, No. SC101581 (Mo. May 4, 2026). The pending stay application only confirms Amici’s concerns, giving them yet another interest relevant to this brief: making sure their previous efforts to defend the referendum right were not in vain.
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Another Amicus brief:
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SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
The Secretary’s application should be denied. The only federal election crisis would be if this Court grants the application and permits an illegal election to be held using unlawful districts.
First, the Missouri Supreme Court did not offend the bounds of ordinary judicial review in reading “any act” in the Missouri Constitution to include laws enacting congressional maps. Its decision is consistent with over a century of precedent from this Court holding that the Elections Clause permits redistricting legislation to be subjected to referenda. Instead, it is the Secretary’s requested relief that would violate the Elections Clause and federal law. The Elections Clause grants initial power over congressional redistricting to the state lawmaking process—including initiatives and referenda where applicable—and gives Congress superseding power over the subject. Granting a stay would violate both elements. It would displace the map arising from Missouri’s lawmaking process—the 2022 map—with one the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously held “is not the law and has never been the law.” App.12a n.8. And it would contravene 2 U.S.C. § 2c, an Elections Clause statute requiring that Representatives be elected “only” from the districts established “by law” of the states—words chosen specifically because some states, like Missouri, subject congressional maps to initiatives and referenda.
Second, the Secretary’s unclean hands preclude relief. He and the state Attorney General, who has represented him in this case, openly and loudly proclaimed their strategy of maximum delay. “Delay works in our favor,” the Attorney General said on talk radio in January. App.739a. Surprised to learn the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously refused to be an instrument of that strategy, they now ask this Court to put their ploy back on track. This Court, like the state court, should play no part in that scheme.
Third, Purcell does not apply to the state court’s enforcement of its own state constitution. In any event, the Missouri Supreme Court weighed the equities and found the Secretary to blame for his purposeful delay strategy. This Court has no power to disrupt that decision, and to do so would offend Purcell. Missouri election officials are already taking steps to comply with the state court decision. The bipartisan co-directors of the Jackson County Elections Board—the county most affected by the map changes and the second-most populated in the state—have publicly announced they can and will comply with the Missouri Supreme Court’s order.2
This Court should decline the Secretary’s invitation to create a federal constitutional violation and become the lynchpin of his plan to subject Missourians to an unlawful general election.
[….]
Denny Hoskins (r) [2022 file photo].
“…This Court should decline the Secretary’s invitation to create a federal constitutional violation and become the lynchpin of his plan to subject Missourians to an unlawful general election…”
The right wingnut industrial complex also weighed in:
Sep 04 2026 Brief in Support of Application of Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Missouri Republican State Committee submitted.
Sep 07 2026 Amicus brief of American Center for Law and Justice submitted.
Sep 07 2026 Amicus brief of State of Florida submitted.
“…Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37, the Attorneys General of Florida and Texas, on behalf of the State of Florida, the State of Texas, and 18 other States, respectfully submit this brief as amici curiae in support of the applicant, Secretary Hoskins…”
Florida, Texas, and the usual suspects. The fuck they say.
Previously:
HB 1: Gerrymander this (September 9, 2025)
Can play with AI, can’t be bothered to certify petition signatures (June 7, 2026)
Denny Hoskins (r) is a pre-eminent legal scholar and final arbiter of the Missouri Constitution, said no one ever… (August 4, 2026)
Missouri Supreme Court: “HB 1 congressional redistricting, yeah, no.” (September 3, 2026)
Favorite whine (September 3, 2026)
Gov. Mike Kehoe (r) thinks we’re all ignorant and stupid (September 3, 2026)
What the Missouri Supreme Court said (September 3, 2026)
Missouri Supreme Court slaps down Denny Hoskins (r)….again (September 4, 2026)
Tears in the rain (September 4, 2026)
