A federal appeals court panel on Thursday was entertaining an endeavor to resuscitate new Missouri congressional districts championed by President Donald Trump, notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court had barred those districts from being deployed in the November election.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals entertained arguments in the protracted controversy over whether the state ought to employ the newly drawn Republican-favored U.S. House districts, precisely as it did in its August primary.

Yet it remained immediately indeterminate what ramifications would ensue, even should the panel rule in favor of the new map.

This is attributable to the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously stayed the enforcement of a lower court order endorsing the map, pending a prospective appeal and ultimate adjudication by the high court.

Missouri is presently poised to conduct its November election under the same congressional districts it employed in 2024 and 2022, pursuant to prior rulings by both the Missouri Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Local elections officials asserted in a court filing that they are already printing ballots bearing those districts and confront a Friday deadline under federal law for dispatching absentee ballots to overseas citizens and military voters.

State law mandates that absentee ballots be made available to all other voters by next Tuesday.

To endeavor to alter districts at this juncture would be “practically impossible” and would incur costs amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the filing submitted by the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities.

Counsel for Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Onder and state Sen. Rick Brattin — the GOP nominee in one of the congressional districts — intimated to the appellate panel that the opportunity to revert to the Trump-backed map has not yet lapsed.

As he had contended in the lower courts, Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi exhorted the appellate panel to hold that the U.S. Constitution proscribes a referendum petition from suspending a congressional map enacted by lawmakers pending a statewide vote thereon — notwithstanding that Missouri’s highest court has decreed precisely such a suspension to be mandated under the state constitution.

The appellate tribunal's jurists signalled that they would render their ruling expeditiously, observing that any determination they reach is liable to be taken on further appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

"We must arrive at a determination, and subsequently they must arrive at a determination, and then the hapless election officials are left to contend with the whereabouts of everything," said Judge James Loken, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

Loken pointedly interrogated the attorney representing the group People Not Politicians, which had amassed petition signatures sufficient to compel the new Trump-backed map to a statewide vote.

As attorney Chuck Hatfield contended that it was too late for the appeals panel to endeavor to effect changes to the election, an exasperated Loken ultimately cut him off, declaring: “You’re out of time, dang it!”

The remaining two panelists — Judges David Stras and Justin Smith — are likewise Trump appointees.

Prior to his June appointment, Smith had practised as an attorney who, on Trump's behalf, pursued an ultimately unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court against a $5 million jury verdict in a lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Missouri’s redistricting imbroglio has proven the most protracted, labyrinthine, and bewildering among roughly a dozen states that endeavored to reconfigure their U.S. House districts over the past year.

Trump precipitated this anomalous wave of mid-decade redistricting when he exhorted Republican-led states to redraw districts so as to secure an advantage in the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and impinge upon his agenda.

In September, Missouri legislators enacted a new congressional map that substantially reconfigured a Kansas City-based district held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

Brattin secured victory in a Republican primary to challenge Cleaver.

Republicans harbored hopes that the map might enable them to capture seven of the state's eight House seats — one more than their present tally.

Yet opponents, in December, tendered thousands of petition signatures in an endeavor to compel a statewide ballot on the newly drawn districts.

Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins deferred until August — the very day on which the primary was conducted under those new districts — before rejecting the petition, contending that referendum petitions are impermissible in matters of congressional redistricting.

In September, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned Hoskins’ finding, thereby precluding the new map from being employed until such time as voters determine, via a November referendum, whether to uphold or reject it.

The court held that the state must instead utilize the districts sanctioned in 2022.

Yet that did not conclude the affair.

A federal judge in St. Louis subsequently issued a conflicting order prohibiting the use of any map other than the newly Trump-backed one.

That judge maintained that switching districts between the primary and general elections could infringe upon federal rights.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed that judge’s order, but on Thursday the 8th Circuit appellate court nonetheless proceeded to hear arguments on the matter.