The courts will determine if the bill revising Missouri’s congressional districts is constitutional, Gov. Mike Kehoe said Thursday after announcing his plans to sign the measure this weekend.
Speaking to reporters after an event in Columbia, Kehoe said he felt confident he was on firm legal ground when he called lawmakers into a special session.
“We’ll let the courts decide that,” Kehoe said. “We wouldn’t have went into this without feeling like we had good advice on that.”
Over 10 days this month, lawmakers met and passed a revised map for Missouri’s eight congressional districts so Republicans could have an advantage in the 5th District, currently held by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat.
“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that,” Kehoe said in a news release announcing he would sign the bill on Sunday.
Even before the special session began, legal challenges were being filed. The NAACP has a case argued Sept. 15 challenging Kehoe’s authority to have called a special session on redistricting. Additional court challenges are underway in Cole and Jackson counties seeking to have the new map declared void because the Missouri Constitution directs lawmakers to draw districts after the census every 10 years, but is silent on whether it can be done at other times.
Kehoe said he relied on his advisers on the legality of his decision to call a special session.
“I really believe they’re very good on these issues, and we think we’ll withstand all those challenges,” he said.
The case in Jackson County alleges the map is incorrect because a voting district designation is used twice in the bill. The court must decide if that is a mistake that scuttles the bill but Kehoe on Thursday said he believes it is a mistake in census mapping, not in the bill.
“Once you look at the map, if you just read the language, it doesn’t seem to make sense,” Kehoe said. “But if you read the language and you look at the map, you can see somewhere along the line there was some sort of error when they put those numbers on out of the 60,000 voting districts across the United States.”
As the case that is the most advanced in challenging the new map, the NAACP lawsuit is likely the first that will be decided. At an “emergency meeting” Wednesday, Missouri NAACP president Nimrod Chapel said the group will not waver in their effort to throw out Missouri’s new congressional map.
If successful, the lawsuit will not only get the new map tossed but also remove a proposed constitutional amendment from the ballot that would change the way majorities are counted for constitutional changes proposed by initiative petitions.
“We recognized instantly that gerrymandering in the state of Missouri targeted two Black congressional districts, Kansas City and St. Louis,” Chapel said. “Not only is this an attack on the most populated urban centers within the state of Missouri, but it’s also an attack on Black and brown voices whose needs are distinct, in some ways, from rural Missouri.”
Since the special session ended on Sept. 12, the NAACP has filed an amended petition asking for the map to be scrapped. The state’s attorney, Solicitor General Louis Capozzi, has said the lawsuit should be dismissed because lawmakers have already adjourned.
Chapel also said he believes that the use of the same voting district designation twice in the bill is a mistake that will undermine the new map.
“There is a map that’s been proposed and is sitting on the governor’s desk that cannot be signed,” Chapel said, “and the reason that it cannot be signed is because it has precincts that will get to vote on multiple occasions.”
Chapel said the NAACP is prepared to appeal the case to the Missouri Supreme Court if the judge sides with the governor.
“We’re suing them,” he said, “and we will keep suing them until they get it right.”
