JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s highest court has ordered Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to explain why he should not be held in contempt after he directed local election officials to use a 2025 congressional map the court has already barred.

Chief Justice W. Brent Powell’s late Tuesday show-cause order, reported by KMBC and Law Dork, gives Hoskins until noon Central on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, to answer. Oral argument is set for 10 a.m. Thursday, and Hoskins must appear in person. He has not been held in contempt.

The contempt fight erupted hours after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri officials’ emergency bid to stay the state court’s Sept. 3 injunction — the same denial we covered when the high court rejected the map for midterms. Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued a temporary restraining order in a separate suit that bars Hoskins from using any map other than the 2025 plan (HB 1) for the Nov. 3 election.

On paper, those orders collide. The Missouri Supreme Court held that because a referendum petition was filed before HB 1 took effect, “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law,” leaving the 2022 districts in force unless voters approve the new map in November. Clark’s TRO treats the primary-election map as the status quo and orders officials to keep using it.

Hoskins’s elections division emailed local officials that the federal ruling “takes precedence” under the Supremacy Clause, according to a contempt motion from People Not Politicians’ Richard von Glahn. On X, Hoskins said he would “continue to abide by Judge Clark’s federal temporary restraining order on a federal congressional election,” KMBC reported. Challengers argue a federal district judge cannot rewrite the state court’s conclusion that HB 1 never became law.

Voters and candidates are left with dueling commands from state and federal courts over which districts count for November — the kind of institutional pile-up that turns election administration into a power fight instead of a rules-bound process. Hoskins’s written answers are due Wednesday; the Missouri Supreme Court hears the contempt question Thursday morning.

Sources