I’m still hoping to write about tomorrow’s twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11—a defining moment not just in my life (as a New Yorker who went to elementary school in the literal shadows of the Twin Towers), but in shaping the trajectory of my career. I’m also hoping to preview the stakes of the Court’s impending ruling in the mail-in ballots case, although my Georgetown Law colleague Marty Lederman has a lot of that covered in a fantastic post over at Just Security.
But today’s bonus post has an even more immediate trigger—the chaos unfolding in Missouri with respect to which congressional map the state will use in the upcoming midterm elections. That issue is back at the Supreme Court for the second time in three days—for reasons that are complicated, but worth unpacking, as this post attempts to do in detail below the fold. (TL;DR: There are currently conflicting injunctions from the Missouri Supreme Court and a federal district judge in St. Louis, the former barring the state from using the map the legislature passed last year based on its interpretation of Missouri state law; the latter requiring it to do so based on a highly dubious interpretation of federal law.)
And although it’s possible that the U.S. Supreme Court may yet do the right thing (i.e., put back into effect the Missouri Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling from last week by issuing a stay of the federal district court’s TRO from Tuesday night, which would lead to Missouri using its 2022 map in November), there’s a larger point to be made, as well—which is that, no matter what they do later today or tomorrow, the justices in Washington bear at least some of the responsibility for how we got here in the first place.
For those who aren’t paid subscribers, we’ll be back with our continuing coverage of the Supreme Court no later than Monday (and probably sooner). For those who are, please read on.
