A Missouri court Friday struck down biased language from a high-stakes ballot question that could let voters block a Trump-backed GOP congressional gerrymander — but left some wording that favors the new gerrymander intact.
The ruling is a partial victory for voting rights advocates, who argued the original ballot summary drafted by Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) was designed to mislead voters — but it also underscores how GOP officials have continued to rig the process as they race to lock in the new map before the 2026 election.
Hoskins originally approved this ballot language:
“Do the people of the state of Missouri approve the act of the General Assembly entitled ‘House Bill No. 1 (2025 Second Extraordinary Session),’ which repeals Missouri’s existing gerrymandered congressional plan that protects incumbent politicians, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more cities and counties intact, are more compact, and better reflects statewide voting patterns?”
The court found several of those phrases crossed the line.
“As a preliminary matter, the Secretary admitted in his amended answer that the phrases ‘gerrymandered’ and ‘protects incumbent politicians’ are unfair on the grounds that they are argumentative and likely to create prejudice,” the court wrote. “Consequently, the Court finds that the phrases ‘gerrymandered’ and ‘protects incumbent politicians’ are unfair and the summary statement must be revised.”
The court also struck another key phrase — that the new map “better reflects statewide voting patterns” — finding it was not just biased, but misleading.
“This Court finds that the language claiming, ‘and better reflects statewide voting patterns’ is intentionally argumentative and likely to create prejudice, and is therefore stricken from the summary statement,” the court added.
The court, however, upheld the rest of the state’s language — including claims that the new map “keep[s] more cities and counties intact” and is “more compact.”
The revised, court-approved ballot summary — which voters may see if the referendum is allowed to proceed — reads:
“Do the people of the state of Missouri approve the act of the General Assembly entitled ‘House Bill No. 1 (2025 Second Extraordinary Session),’ which repeals Missouri’s congressional plan, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more cities and counties intact, and are more compact?”
The ruling lands in the middle of a much larger battle over whether Missouri voters will even get the chance to weigh in on the new congressional map.
Six months after Republicans rushed the map into law following pressure from President Donald Trump, the legal status of the map remains unresolved.
Pro-democracy advocates say that uncertainty is no accident.
Richard von Glahn, who leads the referendum effort through People Not Politicians, has accused state officials of deliberately dragging out the process to ensure the map is used in at least one election before voters can overturn it.
“What they are hoping to do is to lose slowly enough so that they may conduct an illegal election and provide President Trump a congressional seat against the requirements of the Missouri Constitution and, I think, the wish of Missouri voters,” von Glahn said.
The group submitted more than 300,000 signatures in December to qualify the referendum — far above the required threshold — but verification has moved slowly, especially in a key congressional district where the campaign is just dozens of signatures short of qualifying.
At the same time, Republicans have advanced a controversial legal argument that the new map remains in effect unless and until the referendum is formally certified — a position critics say would allow the state to run out the clock.
The ballot language fight is just one piece of that broader strategy.
From initially resisting the referendum petition to challenging signatures, Missouri officials have repeatedly taken steps that voting rights advocates say are designed to rig the process.
Friday’s ruling removes some of the most obvious bias — but leaves intact language that still frames the new map in positive terms.
And with the 2026 election fast approaching, the bigger question — whether Missouri voters will get a fair chance to reject the gerrymander before it’s too late — remains unresolved.