Wise v. State

Voters, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Campaign Legal Center, challenge the state’s new congressional district map, passed into law in September 2025, arguing it violates the state constitution’s prohibition on mid-decade congressional redistricting, compactness and contiguity requirements, and equal protection clause. They argue that the state constitutional provision authorizing congressional redistricting upon a new decennial census is an implied prohibition against the legislature exercising redistricting authority outside that circumstance. The new map violates the compactness requirement, the plaintiffs allege, because the Kansas City metropolitan area is splintered into two mishapen districts, as well as its equal protection and contiguity requirements by double assignment of a Kansas City precinct to two different congressional districts.

The mid-decade redistricting claim was stayed pending the Missouri Supreme Court’s review of the same issue in Luther v. Hoskins. With respect to the remaining claims, a trial court upheld the map following a bench trial, finding it adequately complied with the constitutional requirement that congressional districts be divided into “contiguous territory as compact and as nearly equal in population as may be.”