The most dangerous gerrymander yet?
Missouri tried to rewrite the rules with new congressional maps to give one party a big advantage in 2026. Here's how our movement is fighting back in court on behalf of ALL voters.
The redistricting arms race is expanding into new states, and this month Missouri became the latest testing ground for a gerrymandering strategy that has nothing to do with voters and everything to do with power.
State lawmakers just jammed through a mid-decade congressional map in violation of both the Missouri Constitution and basic democratic principles. The map doesn’t just tilt the playing field — it tears it up.
Within hours of its passage, our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC), filed a lawsuit to stop the map from taking effect. The legal challenge is straightforward: Missouri’s Constitution only permits congressional redistricting once per decade, following the U.S. Census. By redrawing districts midstream, knowing full-well it was unconstitutional to do so, the legislature violated the Constitution it swore to defend.
The Constitution also requires that districts be as compact as possible so that communities with shared interests can elect representatives who actually reflect them. Instead, lawmakers carved Kansas City into three districts, scattering its voters into distant rural areas. And in their haste, they even managed a glaring error — assigning some Kansas City voters to two different congressional districts.
These aren’t minor defects. They strike at the heart of representative government. Missouri’s map was designed to dilute the power of urban voters and entrench one-party rule, while ignoring the state’s constitutional guardrails. That’s unlawful, and if left unchecked, it sets a dangerous precedent for states across the country.
Why This Case Matters
Missouri is not acting in isolation. Trump-aligned politicians have been pressuring states to engage in mid-decade gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterms, creating a patchwork of manipulated maps designed to lock in partisan advantage for years. If Missouri succeeds in defying its own constitution, other states will follow — and voters everywhere will lose.
The courts remain one of the last places where these power grabs can be stopped. Our movement’s track record shows what’s possible, and YOU are part of these victories: In Michigan and Wisconsin, WE dismantled gerrymanders that distorted representation for an entire decade. In Utah, OUR legal challenge recently secured a landmark victory when the state supreme court rejected lawmakers’ attempt to delay a fair map. Each of those fights began with the same basic conviction guiding the Missouri lawsuit: that voters, not politicians, should determine the outcome of elections.
Litigation as Leverage
In a moment when many Americans feel overwhelmed by the scale of democratic backsliding (e.g. book bans, political violence, corruption in high office) cases like this one are where the tide can actually turn. Litigation is slow, painstaking work, but it has power. A single successful lawsuit can undo a legislature’s entire plan to rig elections. It can reset the rules of the game to what the law demands.
That’s why high-impact legal action matters. Without it, unconstitutional maps stand. With it, voters regain their voices. And while the fight in Missouri is about one state’s lines on a map, it carries implications for every American who cares about living in a country where democracy is not just a slogan, but a practice protected by law.
Supporting this work means giving democracy its best chance to withstand partisan manipulation. Missouri is just the latest battlefield, but it won’t be the last. Together, we can make sure voters, not politicians, decide our future.