After its record $24 billion COVID award from China and its two U.S. senators’ key roles in a watershed hearing on government censorship this past week, Missouri may be about to make even more history – this time at the U.S. Supreme Court.

And in a case that very well could determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.

The high court last week heard arguments in a Louisiana lawsuit that will decide whether states can draw lines expressly to create black-majority congressional districts – a practice known as gerrymandering.

And, once again, a Missourian is at the center of it.

Edward Greim, a native of Excelsior Springs and a lawyer with a national reputation in such cases at Kansas City’s Graves Garrett Greim law firm, argued before the nine Supreme Court justices Monday on behalf of plaintiffs seeking a return to the Constitution’s true colors – a colorblind government.

When Louisiana’s post-2020 Census congressional map contained one black-majority district, a federal judge and, later, a federal appeals court ruled lawmakers needed to draw a second one under the Voting Rights Act. So they did.

But when a group of non-African American voters sued over that map, a new three-judge appeals panel a year ago ruled it unconstitutional for relying too much on race, violating the voters’ equal protection rights.

Edward D. Greim

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to suspend that ruling, requiring the state to use both black districts in last November’s election – though they also agreed to decide this year whether that was the right thing to do.

Thus Greim – though named a “Constitutional and Election Law Trailblazer” by the National Law Journal, and having appeared before numerous appellate and state supreme courts –  found himself in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time to defend the three-judge ruling.

That had to be intimidating. Was he nervous?

“Oh, very much so,” Greim tells The Heartlander in an exclusive interview.

Practicing before Supreme Court

How does even an accomplished attorney prepare to address the highest court in the land?

“Well, I did about four practice sessions. And each time I had trusted friends of all political and legal persuasions basically ask me the hardest questions they could imagine. 

“Then after we were done, we talked about both the substance and the style of my answers.”

What did he learn from that? 

“I think I learned that there were some simpler ways to win the case that had been apparent even when we were briefing the case. There’s something about the question-and-answer format that puts the law in sharp relief.”

That’s a good thing, because, as is sometimes portrayed in movies and is evident in audio feeds of Supreme Court arguments, the justices interrupt the lawyers quite often – so it’s difficult to get up a head of steam.

That serves to keep the lawyer on his or her toes, and hones the argument to a fine point.

“You can’t hide behind citations and long explanations the way you can in a brief,” Greim explains.

“Every single justice is at the pinnacle of their profession. And on a historical scale, they’re all extremely gifted. And so, to have nine of those people really requires you to have prepared, even for things that you don’t think are relevant. 

“They, with their level of understanding, or their view of the term, or the last couple of terms of court, may see an importance in the case that you’ve missed. And so, you’ve got to be ready for nine different potential views on those topics.”

For those lawyers who’ve never stood before the Supreme Court – which is to say the vast majority of them – Greim says to expect a transcendent experience.

“Most important thing you’ve ever done”

His sure was – especially in the aftermath.

“I felt great,” he says. “It was the best feeling I’ve ever had as a lawyer – because I felt like I could focus for 30 minutes and actually make a difference for my clients.

“It’s like being told you’re given 30 minutes to do the most important thing you’ve ever done in your life. They start the clock running and they say, ‘Go make a difference. You’ve got 30 minutes.’

“Honestly, there’s really nothing else like it.”

Every Supreme Court case is monumental, but some are simply landmark – and this one, captioned Louisiana v. Callais, has the word “landmark” written all over it.

In most every other facet of public life, it’s now recognized as unconstitutional to factor in race – except in drawing congressional districts.

This case could make that very pivotal aspect of political life colorblind as well.

As Greim puts it, his clients contend that when one draws a congressional district with race primarily in mind, “you are violating everyone’s equal protection rights – both the black voters and the white voters. And every other race as well.  

“And the reason for that is that you are mainly viewing each person as a product of his or her race. You’re making the prohibitive assumption that because of someone’s race, they think a certain way, they view politics a certain way, and they’re going to vote for particular candidates.  

“You have to stereotype every voter in that district based on race in order to draw the boundaries of the district.

“Contrary to our democracy”

“If there’s any principle that is completely foreign to our Constitution, it’s [assigning] congressional districts based on race. We don’t do that.

“We have a plan under federal law that we’re going to send people to Congress based on geographic districts that are regular, so that when you go to Congress, you don’t represent a party and you don’t represent a race, you represent the shared interests of people living in that district.

“We can’t say that all whites have similar interests. We can’t say that all blacks have similar interests.

“The court talks about the problem of racial balkanization; it’s a problem to assume that people of the same race think sufficiently alike that we ought to be giving out congressional seats based on race. It runs completely contrary to the entire plan of our democracy.

“The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are supposed to be leading us to a color-blind Constitution. That’s the vision. But if you dole out [congressional districts] based on race, you’re building into the fabric of our country race, and you’re telling citizens that your identity to us is not as a voter, it’s as a member of a particular race. 

“I can’t imagine anything, really, more harmful to the future of our country.”

Surely the 2024 election proved that it’s folly to ascribe certain political leanings to particular races; Donald Trump won a record amount of Hispanic votes and the most black votes by a Republican in half a century.

While that doesn’t technically play into the Supreme Court case, it buttresses Greim’s.

“It is important,” Greim explains, “because it demonstrates that we can’t think of races as blocs of people who all believe the same. I mean, white voters’ political preferences are heavily split. And we’re seeing the same thing is true for black voters and for others. 

“And we just hope for the day when we stop thinking about individual voters as a, quote, white voter or a black voter or Hispanic voter. Instead, we hope that we think of them as an individual who forms their own thoughts and their own convictions based on a careful study of the issues, and based on free speech with their fellow citizens.”