Missouri Supreme Court finds Hoskins in contempt, says he purged it by directing 2022 map
UPDATED · Thu. 4:00 p.m. EDT
The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday found Secretary of State Denny Hoskins in contempt for earlier directing local election authorities to use the 2025 HB 1 congressional map, then said he purged the contempt by reversing course and ordering the 2022 map after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark’s temporary restraining order, ABC 17 News, KRCG, and St. Louis Public Radio reported. Chief Justice W. Brent Powell said Hoskins corrected his contemptuous conduct once the federal stay left the state high court’s 2022-map order as the governing directive. Hoskins and Attorney General Catherine Hanaway both said local election authorities are being told to use the 2022 lines for November; a referendum on the 2025 map remains on the Nov. 3 ballot under the state court’s earlier ruling. CNN reported the U.S. Supreme Court’s morning stay of Clark’s TRO issued without noted dissent.
The Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. File photograph; not from Thursday’s court proceedings.
Antony-22 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Center-left view
ABC 17 News, St. Louis Public Radio, and CNN frame Thursday’s sequence as the Missouri Supreme Court first documenting Hoskins’s defiance of its 2022-map order, then accepting his purge after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed Clark’s federal TRO — leaving the referendum pathway and 2022 lines in force for November.
Sources: ABC 17 News · St. Louis Public Radio · CNN
Center-right view
KRCG, Fox News’s earlier Hoskins coverage, and Hoskins’s own Thursday statement emphasize the conflicting federal and state orders that left him between a rock and a hard place after Judge Clark’s TRO, then note that once the U.S. Supreme Court stayed that TRO he directed clerks to the 2022 map and Attorney General Hanaway affirmed that guidance.
Sources: KRCG · Fox News · ABC 17 News (Hoskins / Hanaway statements)