The Supreme Court on Thursday granted an emergency bid from opponents of Missouri’s GOP-friendly congressional map to stop the state from using that map for November’s midterm elections.

The court’s order marked the second Supreme Court loss on the map for Republicans this week, and it came without any justices dissenting in the order. As is typical for such emergency orders, there was no explanation for it.

Elias Law Group, which successfully litigated against the GOP map, said Thursday’s order “definitively ends a complicated period that left Missouri election officials facing contradictory commands from a federal court and the Missouri Supreme Court less than eight weeks before Election Day.”

The high court’s action stems from fast-moving litigation that was prompted by conflicting orders out of Missouri’s Supreme Court, which barred the state from using the GOP map, and a federal district court, which said the state had to use that map.

The state court had ordered Missouri to use its existing map, passed in 2022, in November, rather than the new map passed by state Republicans last year amid the nationwide redistricting push backed by President Donald Trump. Justice Brett Kavanaugh earlier this week rejected the state’s emergency application to halt the state Supreme Court ruling, which seemed to solidify that the existing map would be used in November, rather than the new map that would be even more favorable to Republicans.

But right after Kavanaugh’s order came out, a federal district judge in Missouri, Trump appointee Stephen Clark, issued an order in a separate case, brought by Missouri Republicans, that said the state had to use the new map. That led challengers to the map, People Not Politicians and its executive director Richard von Glahn, to seek to halt Clark’s order, which the justices agreed to do on Thursday.

“Minutes after Justice Kavanaugh denied a request to stay the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision in this redistricting case, a district court chose to deliver the relief this Court withheld based on the exact same manufactured emergency,” they said in their application. They accused the district judge of “charging forward with federal court interference into a state election process that has already been decided by the state’s highest court under state law — a ruling this Court declined to overturn.”

State Republican officials opposed the application, arguing that the district judge’s order allowed for “a timely and orderly congressional election in 2026” because it required the state to use the same congressional map for November that it used for the primary. The state argued that the federal judge’s order was the only thing “preventing the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters in the Primary Election.”

The justices are assigned to field emergency litigation from different regions of the country, and Kavanaugh is currently assigned to the Missouri region. Justices will often refer significant or contentious matters to the full court for all of the justices to weigh in, but the Trump appointee had rejected the previous GOP request on his own. Thursday’s order came from the full court.

The Trump administration supported the state in this litigation. Meanwhile, the administration has its own pending election-related emergency litigation at the high court, including its attempt to enforce mail-ballot restrictions for the midterms.

In the Missouri litigation, von Glahn backs a referendum on the GOP-friendly map to be put to state voters on the November ballot. Missouri’s Republican secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, sought to prevent the ballot measure, reasoning that it was invalid under the state’s constitution. But the Missouri Supreme Court said Hoskins was incorrect about that; it ordered the measure on the November ballot, and it prohibited the state from using the new map unless and until voters approve it.

The state court noted that the referendum petition was submitted to Hoskins in December and that he didn’t announce his finding that it was insufficient until about an hour before a deadline last month.

Separately this week, the state Supreme Court has ordered Hoskins to explain why he should not be held in contempt for taking steps to implement the new map for November in violation of its ruling.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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