A Jackson County circuit judge has rejected a legal challenge to Missouri’s 2025 congressional redistricting plan, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to prove the map violates the Missouri Constitution’s compactness requirements.
The ruling follows a four-day bench trial in February in the consolidated cases Wise v. State and Healey v. State. Plaintiffs asked the court to declare the 2025 map unconstitutional and reinstate the state’s 2022 congressional district plan for the 2026 elections.
In his decision, the judge concluded that the challengers did not meet the high legal standard required to overturn a legislative redistricting plan. Under Missouri law, statutes enacted by the General Assembly are presumed constitutional unless challengers demonstrate they “clearly and undoubtedly” violate the state constitution. The court determined the plaintiffs did not prove that the 2025 districts fail to meet the constitutional requirement that congressional districts be “as compact and as nearly equal in population as may be.”
The lawsuit focused largely on districts in western Missouri, particularly Congressional Districts 4, 5, and 6, which divide portions of Kansas City and surrounding communities. Plaintiffs argued the map improperly splits communities in the Kansas City area and combines urban neighborhoods with more rural regions across western Missouri. Their experts testified that the legislature could have drawn districts that kept more of Kansas City together.
The court found those arguments reflected policy preferences rather than constitutional violations. The ruling notes that Missouri courts have historically recognized redistricting as an inherently political process and have allowed the legislature discretion in balancing competing considerations when drawing districts.
During the trial, experts for both sides presented statistical measures commonly used to evaluate district compactness, including the Reock and Polsby-Popper scores. The court found the 2025 map falls within the historical range of Missouri congressional maps, and in some cases performs better than prior plans. The ruling notes that the 2025 map compares favorably with the 2012 congressional map, which was previously upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court, and in several metrics is more compact than the 2022 map that plaintiffs sought to reinstate.
The judge also emphasized that Missouri law does not require the legislature to maximize compactness above all other factors. Lawmakers may weigh compactness alongside other recognized redistricting principles, including keeping counties and municipalities intact, maintaining contiguous districts and ensuring equal population.
The plaintiffs also raised a technical claim involving a Kansas City voting tabulation district labeled “KC 811,” alleging it had been assigned to two congressional districts in a way that could affect population equality or contiguity. The court found the claim unsupported by the evidence, determining that two separate precincts share the same name but have different identifiers and were properly assigned to different districts.
One issue raised in the lawsuits, whether the Missouri General Assembly had the authority to redraw congressional districts mid-decade, was not resolved in this case. That claim has been stayed pending a decision from the Missouri Supreme Court in a separate case addressing the same legal question.
With the compactness challenge rejected, the court declined to block the 2025 congressional plan, allowing the map to remain in place while the broader question of mid-decade redistricting authority continues to be considered by the state’s supreme court.
Jake Kroesen is a Jackson County native and a graduate of the University of Central Missouri. He holds a B.S. in Political Science.
