The Supreme Court has stayed federal appellate and district orders that would have required Missouri to use its 2025 congressional map in the 2026 U.S. House election. In a September 25 per curiam stay in People Not Politicians v. Onder (26A388), the Court left in place the practical effect of Missouri’s own supreme court ruling: the 2025 map is not yet law because a sufficient referendum petition keeps it from taking effect until voters approve it. As a matter of state law, the 2022 map remains the map for 2026 unless and until that referendum changes the outcome.

Plaintiffs had argued the federal Constitution required use of the 2025 lines even though Missouri’s referendum process blocked them. Lower federal courts issued injunctions on that theory; the Supreme Court paused those injunctions and an Eighth Circuit mandate. Justice Kavanaugh referred the stay application; the full Court granted it absent further order. The opinion walks through the state-law sequence: 2022 enactment, 2025 rewrite, referendum signatures, and the Missouri Supreme Court’s holding that the 2025 map “is not the law and has never been the law” until voters say otherwise.

For candidates and county clerks, the near-term instruction is operational: prepare 2026 congressional contests on the 2022 boundaries unless a later Court order lifts the stay. Redistricting fights often produce late map swaps; this one instead freezes the older lines while state referendum politics continue. Separate emergency matters on the Court’s docket — including immigration stay 26A406 — should not be conflated with the Missouri map caption.