On September 21, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Missouri must use the 2025 maps, instead of the 2022 maps, for its U.S. House elections. Onder v State of Missouri and Hoskins, 26-2797. Here is the decision, which is 3-0. The decision is quite surprising, because Missouri has already been mailing out its general election ballots to overseas absentee voters.

The opinion is based on the idea that because the 2026 primary used the 2025 districts, the general election must use the same maps. Page 23 attempts to say that the primary is intrinsic to the general election. As other courts in this case have done, the decision truncates Missouri code section 115.339 to assert that all candidates in Missouri must be nominated by primary. But the law says new parties nominate by convention. Also, independent candidates are not nominated by primary either. The opinion tries to disguise this by not quoting the entire sentence of the law. The words in the law that the court does not mention are at the beginning: “Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter…”