Supreme Court OKs Senate map despite split communities

Just in time for the opening of candidate filing season, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the state Senate’s current district map passes constitutional muster despite having split two communities in half.

The 5-2 decision on Feb. 14 marked the high court’s first look at Missouri’s constitutional standards for redistricting, which were amended in 2018. The case involves the boundaries of the state’s 34 senate districts, which were redrawn following the 2020 census. Two political subdivisions — Buchanan County in northwestern Missouri, and the city of Hazelwood near St. Louis — each were divided into two senate districts.

Challengers Clara Faatz and William Caldwell argued that those divisions violated the constitution, which requires maps to preserve communities by following political subdivision lines to the extent possible.

The community preservation requirement appears fourth on a list of other criteria that the constitution specifies are “listed in order of priority.” Higher up on the list are requirements that districts be 1) roughly equal in population, 2) follow federal constitutional and statutory requirements and 3) be contiguous and compact.

Many of those requirements reference each other. For instance, the third-ranked requirement says districts should be compact “to the extent permitted by natural or political boundaries.” The equal population requirement, though listed first in priority, specifically allows for up to a 3 percent deviation from the ideal population “if necessary to follow political subdivision lines.”

The challengers argued that mapmakers must consider the requirements together rather than follow them in strict order in a “paint-by-numbers” approach. Nonetheless, the court’s majority said the constitution’s plain text makes criteria lower on the list subordinate to those above them.

Judge Kelly C. Broniec, writing for the majority, said the constitution’s plain text doesn’t indicate that “maintaining political boundaries rises to the same level of priority as compactness, if not higher.”

“A district still must be as compact as possible, but may follow natural or political boundaries without necessarily becoming uncompact,” she wrote.

The challengers also argued that the districts containing the split communities had larger population deviations than the constitution permitted. But the majority said that claim wasn’t preserved for appeal because their lawsuit didn’t bring that as a separate count. It wasn’t enough that the community preservation requirement references the equal population requirement.

“Nothing in the language of these subdivisions suggests that every time community preservation is challenged in a district in any way, the equal population of the district and compactness of the district are also challenged by implication,” Broniec wrote.

In a dissent, Judge W. Brent Powell, joined by Judge Paul C. Wilson, said the court should have considered the equal population claim. He wrote that the ruling left the challengers in districts that were both too large and failed to follow community lines,

“This circumstance is exactly what the Missouri Constitution seeks to prevent,” Powell wrote.

Chuck Hatfield of Stinson, who represented the map’s unsuccessful challengers, said the outcome may have been influenced by the court’s reluctance to interfere with the inherently political process of redistricting, as well as the upheaval that would follow if the existing map were struck down and had to be done again. The filing period for the August primary begins on Feb. 27.

“That’s a really strongly held perspective of the judiciary, and it can be hard to overcome in these cases,” he said.

But ultimately, he said, the court’s ruling could bring more litigation, as many other existing House and Senate districts arguably were drawn with political subdivision boundaries, rather than compactness, in mind.

“We’re going to need another pronouncement to know if the ruling was unique to this case or whether they were intending to announce an interpretation that should be followed in the future,” Hatfield said.

Lowell Pearson of Husch Blackwell, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the House Republican Campaign Committee in the case, had a similar assessment. Although the current House map was not challenged in court, it operates under the same constitutional requirements.

“The Supreme Court opinion is good news for 2024 in that the maps are stable and everyone knows where to file and we can go forward with the 2024 election,” Pearson said. “I do have a concern that the opinion, by elevating compactness above where it actually fits in the constitutional hierarchy, could invite litigation on both the House and Senate maps for the 2026 cycle.”

In contrast, the Missouri Senate Campaign Committee supported the existing map. Eddie Greim of Graves Garrett Greim, who authored the group’s amicus brief, said the majority’s decision correctly followed the “very detailed, step-by-step process” in the constitution.

Greim disagreed that the ruling would invite future challenges — in part, he said, because political groups would see little benefit from doing so.

“I just don’t see a lot of future redistricting litigation in Missouri,” he said. “I think we’d have to see a truly unusual map for groups on the left or on the right to decide they want to devote resources to Missouri, when instead things are much more in flux and in play in states around the country.”

The case is Faatz v. Ashcroft, SC100277.