Online skeptics say Maryland courts won’t rule before the midterms, and that the Supreme Court already blessed this kind of map-drawing in Texas and Mississippi. Neither claim holds up.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A common response to this week’s lawsuit against Maryland’s redistricting amendment is that it’s theater — that the Supreme Court already let red states get away with the same thing, and that no Maryland court will rule before November anyway. Both claims are checkable, and neither survives contact with the record.
“Both claims are checkable, and neither survives contact with the record.”
The Texas and Mississippi comparison doesn’t hold up legally
Start with the idea that this is settled business because the Supreme Court already sided with Texas and Mississippi. In December 2025 and again in April 2026, the Court let Texas use a mid-decade congressional map that a lower court had found to be a racial gerrymander. In May 2026, it vacated a separate order forcing Mississippi to redraw legislative districts. Both are real, and both cut in the direction the skeptics say — but they’re federal Voting Rights Act cases, decided by federal courts, about whether race was used to draw lines.
“The Maryland suit isn’t that case.”
The Maryland suit isn’t that case. It’s a Maryland lawsuit, in a Maryland circuit court, arguing Maryland officials broke Maryland’s own election statutes and constitution when they certified a ballot question. It has nothing to do with race, and it will never reach the U.S. Supreme Court — Maryland’s own Supreme Court is as high as it can go. Whatever SCOTUS thinks about the federal legality of mid-decade redistricting does not resolve whether Maryland complied with Maryland’s own statutory ballot procedures.
Maryland’s own precedent cuts against “it won’t happen before the midterms”
The timing claim is more interesting, because Maryland has direct precedent — and it’s the same precedent the lawsuit itself leans on. Szeliga v. Lamone, the 2022 case that struck down Maryland’s last congressional map, was filed December 23, 2021, and decided March 25, 2022: 92 days, in the same Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, on a Republican-brought challenge to a Democratic map. This suit was filed August 6 — 89 days before the November 3 election. That’s not a promise the court moves at the same pace. But it’s hard to square “this obviously won’t be decided in time” with the fact that the last case of exactly this kind, in exactly this courthouse, took almost precisely the same amount of time this one now has left. The plaintiffs also asked for a three-judge panel and expedited review, both tools Maryland election law specifically makes available for ballot-timing disputes like this one.
“The last case of exactly this kind, in exactly this courthouse, took almost precisely the same amount of time this one now has left.”
What the lawsuit is actually built on
None of this means the suit wins. It pleads six counts, and they’re not equally strong. The cleanest claims are almost arithmetic: a law the Senate passed 44-0 in February and the House passed 135-0 in April — which Moore signed himself in May, effective June 1 — set a July 1 certification deadline for ballot questions, with no late exception written in. HB 2100 didn’t pass until August 4. There isn’t much room to argue about what “July 1” means.
“There isn’t much room to argue about what ‘July 1’ means.”
The harder, more novel argument is about the bill’s override clause — the “notwithstanding any other provision of law” language plaintiffs say was inserted less than an hour before the committee hearing. Their theory is that it was never properly enacted either as ordinary legislation or as part of what voters will actually see on the ballot, since Maryland’s constitutional-amendment process doesn’t involve the governor at all — his role under Article XIV is to proclaim the result after the election, not sign the bill beforehand. Whether a supermajority vote on a constitutional amendment can also validly override an existing statute is not a question Maryland courts appear to have answered before. That’s the piece of this case genuinely up for grabs — not because the lawsuit is weak, but because nobody’s had to answer it yet.
The bottom line
“This isn’t a stunt, and it isn’t a lock.”
This isn’t a stunt, and it isn’t a lock. It’s a real legal theory, built on statutory text a Democratic-controlled legislature wrote and signed itself two months before the special session, in a court that has moved this fast on a nearly identical case before. Dismissing it outright requires ignoring Maryland’s own docket history; assuming it wins requires ignoring that its central legal theory hasn’t been tested anywhere yet.
Sources: complaint filed Aug. 6, 2026, Anne Arundel County Circuit Court (Howell v. Maryland State Board of Elections, Case No. C-02-CV-26-001986); SCOTUSblog; NPR; Texas Tribune; Democracy Docket; Mississippi Today; The American Redistricting Project (Szeliga v. Lamone case history); Maryland Constitution art. XIV, § 1.
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