Supreme Court races against midterms clock

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Supreme Court races against midterms clock President Trump’s mail voting restrictions are on the emergency docket again, but ballots have already begun going out in one state. Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined to restore Missouri Republicans’ congressional map just ahead of the deadline to lock in the state’s ballot, but a ruling in a separate lawsuit has led to continued confusion. Plus, another battle is emerging over whether the Trump administration can overhaul an immigration verification system to check voter rolls. It leaves a lot of unanswered logistical questions with just 55 days to go until the midterms. The mess in Missouri erupted last Thursday night, when the state’s top court decided a congressional map that would hand the GOP a pickup opportunity couldn’t go into effect. It ruled the state’s constitution allows Democratic-aligned organizers to first put the design to a vote in November. Republicans tried taking their case to Kavanaugh, who by default manages emergency cases from Missouri at the Supreme Court. He denied the request without explanation in a one-sentence order late Tuesday afternoon. For a moment, it appeared to be a boost for Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), whose Kansas City-based district was set to be redrawn and hand the GOP a 7-1 split in the state. Things quickly changed. As the Supreme Court was taking a look, Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) had launched a brand-new lawsuit before a federal trial judge. He argues that Missouri’s courts are violating the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which hands state legislatures significant authority over voting. Onder says Missouri’s top court wrongly wrestled that power away. “The U.S. Constitution does not provide for a citizen veto of the legislature’s approved map,” Onder’s suit reads. On Tuesday, he convinced U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, to temporarily order Missouri to continue implementing the GOP’s favored lines. Clark agreed it was needed to avoid “havoc” and “widespread voter confusion.” It leaves two competing rulings on the books: a federal judge has ordered the GOP-favored 7-1 map to proceed, while the Missouri Supreme Court says the state must move ahead with the old 6-2 map. But wait, state law required officials to finalize the ballot…. yesterday. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office (R) tells The Gavel that the state is implementing Republicans’ new map. “We appreciate Judge Clark’s support of the rights of Missouri voters, and intend to comply with this federal ruling,” Hanaway said in a statement. Hanaway and other state Republicans say they can’t practically revert to the old map now that Missouri has already held its primary under Republicans’ favored design. As Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) put it to the Supreme Court, he has “no idea how to manage this chaos.” The legal battle isn’t over yet. The organizer opposing Republicans quickly appealed the federal judge’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. It could soon reach the Supreme Court. And, he wants to hold Hoskins in contempt to force his hand; Missouri’s justices will hold oral arguments Thursday morning. “The Show Me State will not be run into the ground like the communists running NYC on my watch,” Hoskins responded on social media. Already, the high court has another election headache on its hands with Trump’s mail voting order. The blue states challenging Trump’s plan — which adds design requirements and demands states upload voter lists to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) — estimate they’ll send a combined roughly 51 million mail-in ballots over the next two months, court filings show. California accounts for more than 23 million, while Colorado, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Massachusetts round out the leaderboard. On Friday, North Carolina became the first state to start sending mail ballots, on a timeline dictated by state law. Alabama starts on Wednesday. Several others are set to begin next week. It makes for a complicated situation as the Trump administration urges the Supreme Court to lift a judge’s block on the administration’s plan. “Once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices. If you’re having déjà vu, you’re not alone. It’s the third round for Trump’s USPS plan at the high court. Catch up quickly — - Round 1: A judge blocks Trump’s March 31 executive order directing changes to mail voting requirements. The Supreme Court lifts that block, ruling the blue states suing likely have no legal standing to challenge the president’s order itself. - Round 2: The focus shifts to USPS’s implementation of Trump’s directive. The judge rules blue states and private groups retain standing to block it. The administration brought it to the Supreme Court but never got a ruling. - Round 3: The judge replaces her temporary block on USPS’s plan with an indefinite one, making Round 2 moot. The administration is appealing once again. The outcome of the latest round could come from two places. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit has yet to rule on the administration’s request to lift the judge’s order. The final written brief came in Tuesday night, so its ruling could come at any time. Mindful of the clock, the administration didn’t wait to head to the Supreme Court with the request. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson manages emergency matters arising from the 1st Circuit, so she gets the case by default. She set a 4 p.m. EDT Wednesday deadline for the other side to respond. That’s not all that has been on the Supreme Court’s plate. On Tuesday, yet another election-related dispute landed on the justices’ emergency docket. The Trump administration is urging the court to revive a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database overhaul aimed at making it easier for states to check voter registration eligibility. The database, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), is used to determine eligibility for certain federal programs. The change connects SAVE to Social Security records and allows bulk queries in the hopes that states will be prompted to remove individuals from voter rolls as ineligible before the midterms. A judge blocked the overhaul in June for violating the Social Security Act and federal privacy law. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the judge’s ruling in a 2-1 vote. “By making SAVE more difficult to use, the district court’s order impairs the proper administration of federal elections,” Sauer wrote in the administration’s Supreme Court plea. Sauer insists the changes are legal. But his emergency appeal also rests on the contention that the organizations that are suing have no legal standing. It’s an argument Sauer has found success with recently. The Supreme Court agreed a preservationist group likely had no standing to challenge Trump’s White House ballroom and blue states likely weren’t able to sue over the president’s mail-in voting executive order itself. Like those plaintiffs, Sauer says the group of voting and privacy organizations can’t walk into federal court to challenge SAVE’s election use. “The court’s rationale thus implies, illogically, that an individual suffers an Article III injury whenever the government internally shares Social Security numbers in a perfectly lawful manner—for instance, when using the numbers to confirm the identity of an individual seeking entry to a secure facility,” he wrote. The Supreme Court doesn’t appear to view this case with quite the same timing pressure as the others. Chief Justice John Roberts gave the other side until Sept. 15 to respond. Welcome to The Gavel, The Hill’s weekly newsletter unpacking the intersection of courts & politics from Zach Schonfeld and Sophie Brams. Email us tips at zschonfeld@thehill.com and sbrams@thehill.com. You can also reach out to us on X (@ZachASchonfeld and @sophiebrams) or Signal (zachschonfeld.48 and sbrams.32). Sidebar 5 top docket updates - GOP wins on ad rates: The Supreme Court has sided with Republicans in a dispute over whether cheaper advertising rates should be available to political parties and joint fundraising committees ahead of the midterms, not just candidates. - Stars and Stripes firings: The ex-publisher of the Stars and Stripes military newspaper is vowing to “continue on” after a federal judge declined to stop the Pentagon from firing him and two other staffers for alleged insubordination. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden found the employees were unlikely to prove that their terminations violated the First Amendment. - Sinema can be sued: A federal judge in North Carolina has ruled that former Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.) can be sued under the state’s homewrecker law for having a romantic relationship with a married member of her security detail. - ICE officer in federal custody: Christian Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer charged with making false statements about the January shooting of a Venezuelan migrant in Minnesota, has turned himself in to federal authorities. Castro was the subject of a recent extradition fight between Minnesota and Texas, as he also faces state charges. - Ex-pardon attorney challenges firing: Former U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer is suing the Justice Department for firing her last year after she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights be restored. In other news … - Clancy mistrial: A five-week trial to determine whether Lindsay Clancy should be held criminally responsible for the 2023 strangulation deaths of her three children ended in a mistrial last week after jurors were unable to come to a unanimous decision. The jury deliberated for six days — being sent back twice — but ultimately deadlocked 11-1, with Clancy’s attorneys saying the lone holdout refused to vote for acquittal. - Tim Cruz, the district attorney for Plymouth County, Mass., has not yet decided to retry the case. Watch his post-trial press gaggle. - Plus, an Illinois mother accused of killing her 2-year-old son earlier this month during what defense attorneys claim was a psychotic episode had become “very invested” in Clancy’s case, according to prosecutors. Read more from NBC Chicago. In Focus: ID data breach A reported massive data breach of tens of millions of Americans’ drivers’ licenses is sparking lawsuits and a federal investigation. Nearly a dozen lawsuits allege that IDScan.net is at fault for more than 153 million licenses leaked on the dark web. The Louisiana-based company advertises itself as an AI identity verification platform to detect fake IDs. Information about the breach began cropping up last week, when independent journalist Brian Krebs reported that a user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit was offering paid access to digital copies of ID documents for people in the U.S. and Canada. The service, called Nexus, also claimed to have over 10 million ID cards, more than 3 million travel documents and international IDs and at least 579,000 medical cards, according to Krebs. The information reportedly included employment records, residence cards and marijuana dispensary cards. “What distinguishes this from many data incidents is the nature of the information at issue,” Scott Falgoust, a partner at Bryson Harris Suciu & DeMay who co-leads the firm’s data breach and data privacy practice, told The Gavel. He is the lead counsel in five of the cases filed to date. “A password can be reset. A driver’s license cannot. The complaints allege the records at issue include full name, date of birth, home address, license number, and the machine-readable barcode encoding all of it, which is precisely the information used to open fraudulent accounts and to pass identity-verification checks elsewhere,” he continued. Nexus claimed its source was a “major identity verification company” that counted multiple Fortune 500 companies among its customers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s information was reportedly exposed in the leak as well. “We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database,” an initial advertisement on the forum stated, according to Krebs. “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.” Krebs said in an updated blog post on Sept. 2 that the service was no longer accessible, having vanished from the dark web shortly after his story was published. The FBI office in New Orleans confirmed it was “looking into the incident” but declined to comment further due to the “ongoing nature of the investigation.” The company did not return a request for comment on Tuesday. The lawsuits provide a glimpse into IDScan’s customers. Plaintiffs Matthew Bunch and Dillon Sullivan, in separate lawsuits, said the company got their information after they rented cars through Hertz. Plaintiff Martha Sealy claimed her data was also stolen after renting a car from Thrifty Car Rental at Los Angeles International Airport. Some others said they weren’t sure. Attorneys said the lack of notice left their clients vulnerable to identity fraud, unable to adequately monitor their accounts and credit reports for unauthorized activity. At least one plaintiff pointed to estimates that the average out-of-pocket cost for identity theft can range between $298 and $375. “Plaintiff had a reasonable expectation and understanding that Defendant would take — at minimum — industry standard precautions to protect, maintain, and safeguard that information from unauthorized users or disclosure, and would timely notify them of any data security incidents,” Bunch’s lawyers wrote in his class-action suit. On The Docket Wednesday: - Thomas Christopher Ross, a Republican candidate for the Missouri House, will appear in a Springfield courtroom for a detention hearing on charges alleging he orchestrated a plot to plant drugs on his primary opponent. - Elijah Bieniemy, the son of Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, will appear for a preliminary hearing in Leesburg, Va., accused of shooting his mom in July. - Former NFL scout Blaise Taylor will be sentenced in Nashville after being found guilty of killing his girlfriend and unborn child in 2023. He faces life in prison. - A status conference will be held in the Southern District of New York for Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national charged with providing material support to Iranian-backed terrorist organizations and directing attacks targeting U.S. citizens and interests. Thursday: - A status conference will be held in D.C. for Brian Cole Jr., who is charged with planting pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol Friday: - Justice Brett Kavanaugh will lead a panel at the University of Notre Dame to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. - Oral arguments are scheduled in Harrisburg, Pa., in a lawsuit filed by the Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association and the Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania over the Department of Health and Human Services’ alleged attempt to “hijack” Title X, a federal family planning program. Monday: - U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb will hear arguments as former CIA Director John Brennan fights to preserve records he says would be relevant if the Trump administration tries to prosecute him. Tuesday: - Zion Mitchell, a 21-year-old National Guardsman accused of pulling a gun on another National Guard member during an argument outside a fast-food restaurant, will appear in D.C. Superior Court for a status conference. He is being held without bond. What We’re Reading - The Wall Street Journal’s James Romoser: How Two Men Without Lawyers Got Their Cases to the Supreme Court - The Associated Press’s Michael Kunzelman: Party’s over for crypto scammers who went on a spending spree after a $240 million bitcoin theft - Reuters’ Karen Sloan: They earned law degrees in prison. Now comes the next test - Business Insider’s Melia Robinson: Legal tech is booming. A new VC firm wants lawyers in on the action. - The Athletic’s Justin Williams, Seth Emerson and Matt Baker: SEC files amended complaint to lawsuit seeking authority to expel LSU from league Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.