As SC GOP Fails to Advance Trump's Gerrymandering, Missouri Supreme Court Upholds Rigged Map

While five Republican South Carolina senators joined Democrats in blocking a GOP effort to advance President Donald Trump's national gerrymandering push in the state on Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court handed him a key win, approving a rigged congressional map forced through last year.

"MAGA loyalists are using every lever they control, from legislatures to courts, to rig the system and lock voters out of fair representation," said the National Democratic Redistricting Committee after Missouri's top court rejected multiple challenges to the map that targets the 5th Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

In one consolidated case, the court found that opponents of the map failed to show that it "clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements of Article III, Section 45 of the Missouri Constitution."

Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said in a statement that "the arguments in this case, which were presented before the Missouri Supreme Court just this morning, took less than an hour and elicited zero questions from the court for the lawyers for either the plaintiffs or defendants."

"While one might be inclined to hope that these justices managed to grapple with a highly complex, nuanced, and consequential issue in just six hours, it seems clear the justices were not interested in the day's proceedings and simply had their opinion already finalized even before this morning's argument," Jenkins continued. "With this decision, the Missouri Supreme Court has shown Missourians the lack of seriousness with which it takes cases that pertain to protecting their right to vote—a complete and dangerous abdication of the judiciary's role."

Another case stems from a political group that has collected signatures to force a referendum vote on the state's redistricting. The court found that the filing did not automatically suspend the map under the state constitution.

As KOMU reported Tuesday, People Not Politicians Missouri has submitted over 300,000 signatures to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, but the Republican has not yet said whether his office will approve or reject its inclusion on the ballot.

"The secretary of state's own data confirms what more than 305,000 Missourians already made clear: This referendum is sufficient, and the people have a right to vote," Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in the statement after the state court's decisions on Tuesday.

"Today's ruling from the Supreme Court confirms this fact. A sufficient petition suspends the law the day it is turned in," he continued. "Unnecessary delays by politicians do not change this fact. If he continues to delay, then he is moving forward under a map that has been suspended by the people."

Meanwhile, in South Carolina—a state already known for Republican map-rigging—the state Senate voted 29-17, two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to move forward on redistricting to help the GOP, despite Trump's public call to "GET IT DONE!"

Welcoming the result, the state's Senate Democrats said that it "sent a clear message that South Carolina should not be dragged into another unnecessary and divisive redistricting battle driven by Washington insiders."

"South Carolina rejected a politically motivated power grab orchestrated by a White House shaped by perpetually online New York City activists with little understanding of South Carolina," the Senate Democrats continued. "The people of this state expect us to focus on the real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda."

They pledged that "Senate Democrats will continue fighting for fair representation, transparency, and a government focused on the needs of South Carolina families rather than national political gamesmanship."

While the Republican-led Indiana state Senate similarly rejected a Trump-backed gerrymander last December, GOP legislators in Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have caved to pressure from the president and enacted new maps ahead of November's midterm elections, in which Democrats hope to claim majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Tennessee's redistricting came after the right-wing US Supreme Court last month found that Louisiana's map was an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander" and gutted what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The nation's top court on Monday also paved a path for Alabama lawmakers to break up their state’s majority-Black district.

In response to GOP attacks on voting rights across the South, "All Roads Lead to the South," the No Kings coalition, community members, faith leaders, and other organizations are planning demonstrations at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery as well as Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on Saturday, May 16, with solidarity actions across the country.