A group trying to overturn Missouri's new congressional maps went to court Thursday, suing the state for rejecting its initial efforts and for saying it won't count thousands of signatures already collected.
But the hearing was delayed after a Republican-backed group successfully joined the case and requested a new judge. That's after Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green pushed back the hearing due to illness last week.
Since being passed in September, Missouri's new congressional maps have been the subject of multiple lawsuits. The mid-decade redistricting was supported by President Donald Trump and with Trump's explicit desire to give Republicans an advantage in keeping control of the U.S. House.
Before the bill was signed, one group opposing the new map, calling themselves People Not Politicians, began collecting signatures to overturn it through the state's referendum process. Part of that process involves sending a sample petition to Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins.
Hoskins rejected the petitions, saying referendums can only overturn signed laws, not bills. He approved the group's fourth attempt two weeks after Governor Mike Kehoe signed the new map into law.
"The Secretary's approval authorizes the sponsor to begin collecting signatures from registered Missouri voters," Hoskins wrote in a press release. "Under Missouri law, no signatures gathered before this approval date are valid, and doing so constitutes a misdemeanor election offense."
By then, People Not Politicians said they had collected over 90,000 signatures.
"The referendum process is about Missourians' voices being heard, and we shouldn't have a state official seeking to silence those voices arbitrarily," said the group's executive director, Richard von Glahn.
In their lawsuit, they're asking the court to approve the initial request and prohibit Hoskins from invalidating the signatures collected in September and early October.
But they'll have to wait to find out if those signatures will count.
The afternoon before Thursday's hearing, a group calling itself Put Missouri First filed a motion to intervene, or join the lawsuit as a third-party. The political action committee has received $100,000 from national Republican groups to oppose the referendum on the new maps.
"If this Court were to overturn the Secretary of State's findings and certify the referendum for the ballot, (Put Missouri First) would be required to immediately deploy substantial financial and organizational resources to oppose the measure during the election cycle," wrote Marc Ellinger, the group's attorney.
Judge Daniel Green sustained the motion, allowing Put Missouri First to join the case. The group then asked for the hearing to be delayed to allow for more time to gather evidence.
"We're going to have a hearing today, and at the conclusion of that evidence, if you think you need more time to assemble your case, we might talk about continuing the hearing for the intervenors' part of the case, but we'll see what happens," Green said in response.
Then Ellinger requested a different judge. That delayed the hearing until next Friday. Judge Cotton Walker is now set to hear the case.
"We're experiencing a full-blown tantrum by the government and other people who don't want to let the people vote on whether or not to redraw their congressional districts," Charles Hatfield, attorney for People Not Politicians, said after Thursday's hearing. "The shenanigans that are happening here are unprecedented, they're ridiculous and they're undemocratic."
People Not Politicians has until mid-December to "collect signatures from at least 5% of registered voters in six of Missouri's eight congressional districts," according to the Secretary of State's website.
Von Glahn said his group is planning to overshoot the required number of signatures and collect enough to qualify for the ballot, even if the earlier signatures are invalidated.
"Either way, I think it is critically important that all Missourians' voices who wish to be heard on this are counted," he said. "So whether we need the original 92,000 signatures or not sort of misses the point."
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