Missouri's Supreme Court unanimously blocked a Trump-backed congressional map on Thursday, ruling that state officials illegally tossed out a referendum drive against it — a decision that instantly restores the state's old district lines for November and hands Democrats a rare win in the national redistricting brawl.

The court found that a petition carrying nearly 300,000 signatures to put the new map to a public vote was "legal, sufficient, and timely," and that Secretary of State Denny Hoskins wrongly rejected it on primary election day in August. Republican lawmakers passed the new boundaries last September, redrawing Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's Kansas City-area 5th District in hopes of flipping Missouri's congressional delegation from 6-2 to 7-1 in the GOP's favor.

A Two-Month Sprint to the Supreme Court

The ruling means Missouri will use its post-2020-census map in November while voters separately decide the new map's fate at the ballot box. President Trump blasted the decision, saying the court "ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago," according to reporting from Al Jazeera. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said she would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election," Hanaway said, adding that the ruling has "thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis."

The fight is part of a broader, multistate redistricting arms race that both parties have waged this cycle as they scrap for the House majority, with Trump personally pressing red states to redraw lines mid-decade. Missouri Republicans had hoped their new map would help offset Democratic-leaning redraws elsewhere and protect the GOP's narrow House majority in the November midterms.

Richard von Glahn of the group People Not Politicians, which organized the referendum drive, said the ruling showed "the people of Missouri demanded a voice," according to a report carried by Yahoo News. Voter-rights advocates cast the decision as a check on lawmakers bypassing the state's citizen-referendum process for high-stakes political maps.

With the midterms two months out, the case now heads to a Supreme Court already weighing a separate, high-profile Trump administration push over mail-in ballot rules, adding Missouri's map fight to a stack of election-law disputes the justices may have to resolve on an accelerated timeline before voters go to the polls.