On September 4, 2026, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to do something unusual: stop his own state’s highest court from throwing out a congressional map that Missourians had already voted under. The application, Hoskins v. von Glahn, No. 26A304, went to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in his capacity as Circuit Justice for the Eighth Circuit, and it asks him to block a September 3 ruling ordering Missouri back to its old 2022 district lines two months before the November general election. Kavanaugh did not grant the stay outright. He ordered the other side to explain, within days, why he should not. That order for a response, not a decision, is where this case sits as of this writing, and it deserves close attention, because the outcome reaches the Second Amendment far more directly than the caption suggests.
A Map Redrawn, A Primary Already Held
In September 2025, the Missouri General Assembly passed House Bill 1, a new congressional map, by a 21-11 vote in the Senate and a 90-65 vote in the House. Governor Michael L. Kehoe signed it into law on September 28, 2025. The new lines reconfigured the Kansas City-area Fifth District, currently held by Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver, with the effect of shifting Missouri’s eight-seat congressional delegation from a 6-2 Republican advantage under the prior map to a 7-1 advantage under the new one. Missouri then ran its August 2026 primary under HB 1. Roughly 1.2 million Missourians voted, in districts drawn by that map, to choose the candidates who would appear on the November general-election ballot.
Then, on September 3, 2026, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in Von Glahn v. Hoskins, No. SC101805, that HB 1 was unlawful and ordered the state to revert to the map Missouri had adopted back in 2022, the one that produces a 6-2 delegation. The court gave no guidance on how a state reassigns already-selected primary winners into different districts eight weeks before a general election. That omission is the center of Missouri’s argument to the Supreme Court.
The Purcell Doctrine’s Late Hour
Missouri’s application leans on the Purcell doctrine, the rule from Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1 (2006), that federal courts should not change election rules so close to a vote that the change itself becomes the source of confusion. Missouri’s own filing puts the stakes starkly:
“A federal-election-administration disaster is unfolding in Missouri. In August 2025, the Missouri General Assembly adopted a new congressional map (the ‘HB 1 map’); that map was used about one year later in the August 2026 Primary Election, in which about 1.2 million Missourians voted. But yesterday, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the State to use a dramatically different map—one adopted in 2022—for the imminent 2026 General Election. The court gave no specific guidance on how this is to be done—but it undoubtedly will require the winners of the Primary Election to run in dramatically different districts for the General Election.”
The Missouri Supreme Court’s order arrived after a completed primary and roughly two months before the general election, without addressing how voters newly reassigned to unfamiliar districts would even know which candidates now appeared on their ballot. If Purcell means anything, it means a court does not do this in September of an election year.
An Appointed Court Overruling an Elected Legislature
Missouri’s Supreme Court judges do not reach the bench through direct election in the ordinary sense. Under the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan, the governor appoints them from a list the Appellate Judicial Commission prepares, and they later face only up-or-down retention votes rather than contested elections. I think that structural distance from the ballot box is worth naming when seven judges chosen that way overturn a map the elected legislature passed, and do so after the primary built around that map has already been conducted.
Why an Extra House Seat Is a Second Amendment Question
This case never mentions the Second Amendment, but I have argued for years that the right to keep and bear arms depends on more than any single ruling. It depends on who controls the institutions that fund, enforce, and oversee it. If Democrats take the House in November, they control the appropriations process for the Department of Justice, including the Civil Rights Division that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon now leads, and they control the subpoena power to investigate the officials carrying out this administration’s Second Amendment enforcement priorities at DOJ and ATF. One seat, the difference between 7-1 and 6-2 out of Missouri’s delegation, will not decide House control by itself. Races like it, multiplied across the map, will.
I put little stock in polling that treats a Democratic House as a foregone conclusion. Forecasts of this kind have been wrong before, and Republicans have a genuine path to hold both chambers if every seat, including this one, is decided under the map the legislature actually enacted.
Watching the Docket
For now, this is a request for a response, not a ruling. Justice Kavanaugh has asked the parties to tell him why he should not stay the Missouri Supreme Court’s order, and that briefing is underway. I will be watching this docket closely, because however it comes out will say something about how much room the Purcell doctrine still has this close to an election, and about who holds the House, and with it a piece of the Second Amendment’s fate, after January.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.