Two lawsuits are being jointly heard in a bench trial this week in Kansas City on whether Missouri’s new congressional map is unconstitutional.
The “Missouri First” map redraws the 5th Congressional District to include a large swath of rural Missouri while dividing Kansas City up among three separate districts. Marina Jenkins with the National Redistricting Foundation told reporters during a Zoom conference call that the map violates the requirement that Missouri’s congressional districts be “compact.”
“In past cases, the Missouri Supreme Court has upheld this constitutional right and evaluated compactness by considering whether districts depart from the principle of a, quote, ‘closely united territory,’” she said.
Jenkins pointed out that the 5th Congressional District, which until recently was limited to the Kansas City metro, now stretches more than halfway across Missouri and includes Jefferson City, Columbia, and numerous small towns. The seat is currently held by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City.
“Until 2025, Kansas City had always had a congressional district to itself,” she said. “The new district lines are not only drawn in a nonsensical manner, but also extend from the highly populated Kansas City metro area to much less populated rural communities hundreds of miles away.”
Jenkins also expressed confidence that the plaintiffs in Elizabeth Healey v. Missouri and Terrance Wise v. Missouri have strong cases and will prevail.
“The historical perspective of splitting Kansas City like a pizza – it’s sort of a ‘where there’s smoke, there is fire’ kind of evidentiary point,” she said.
Gov. Mike Kehoe defended the map in a press release when he signed it into law last year.
“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the congressional representation of states like New York, California, and Illinois,” he said. “We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk.”
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