Missouri’s Supreme Court has rejected validating the redistricting maps for this year’s congressional and state Senate elections, potentially causing trouble down the road for this year’s elections.

With the congressional maps, the state high court ordered a lower court to hold further hearings on a challenge that the maps violate a requirement for compactness. In a unanimous decision, the court gave the lower court until Feb. 3 to make a decision, which gives the legislature time to come up with a new congressional district layout, if necessary.

The plan, approved by a Republican-controlled legislature over the Democratic governor’s veto, effectively eliminates the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan in St. Louis to meet the requirement for the state to eliminate one of its districts.

With the state Senate map, the court completely rejected the pending plan. Without a dissenting vote, the Supreme Court threw out the state Senate map that had been drawn by a panel of appeals court judges.

The panel actually issued two maps. The first, the court found, violated the constitution’s restriction on splitting counties between state Senate districts. The appeals court panel filed a second map to address that problem, but the Supreme Court ruled the panel had no power to rescind its original map.

The court’s decision throws the issue back to a several-month process that could extend beyond the August primary.