Court orders metro Detroit legislative maps redrawn

Clara Hendrickson, Detroit Free Press
Updated ·5 min read
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In response to a lawsuit brought by Detroiters, a three-judge panel ruled Thursday that more than a dozen state legislative maps running through the majority-Black city are unconstitutional because race predominated in Michigan's first-ever citizen-led mapping process.

The maps must be redrawn and no more elections can be held under the current lines, the panel ordered. The judicial appointees of former President George W. Bush, a Republican, directed the parties in the case to appear before the court in January to discuss how to redraw the lines.

They ruled that the 13 Detroit area maps at issue in the case were drawn in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits drawing district lines on the basis of race.

When asked whether the mappers plan to appeal, the redistricting commission's executive director, Edward Woods III, said the group needs time to review the decision. "The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is aware and disappointed by the Court's decision," he said in an email.

The lawsuit against the redistricting commission alleged the maps drawn by the commission also violated federal voting rights requirements to draw districts that provide protected racial minorities an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates, but the panel found that because the commission violated the Equal Protection Clause, plaintiffs did not need to prove their claim that the new maps illegally disenfranchise Black voters. The lawsuit received financial support from a group affiliated with Republican Tony Daunt who serves as a member of Michigan's election panel.

Michigan voters overhauled the process for drawing congressional and state legislative maps with a 2018 ballot proposal, creating an independent citizens commission to draw the lines. The inaugural group of redistricting commissioners made major changes to metro Detroit state legislative districts drawn by Republicans last decade. The commission eliminated majority-Black districts in the state Senate and reduced the number of those districts in the state House.

After the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit alleging the new lines diluted an opportunity for Black voters to elect their preferred candidates, a federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan in March last year sought a court ruling ordering the commission to redraw the state House and Senate maps.

Over six days in a Kalamazoo courtroom, the judges heard emotional testimony from redistricting commissioners, statistics-heavy presentations from political scientists and even a reference to metro Detroit rapper Eminem's "8 Mile."

At the outset of the redistricting process, experts hired by the group told the mappers that the old GOP-drawn maps excessively concentrated Black voters in districts, minimizing their influence. They instructed the commissioners to fix what they called "packed" districts. Lawyers for the commission contend that the new lines pairing Detroit with surrounding suburbs expand opportunities for Black voters.

In response to allegations that hitting racial demographic targets for the new districts was the overriding factor influencing the shape of the district lines, lawyers for the commission countered that no one factor predominated. In addition to race, the commission aimed to draw fair maps that would not give any political party a disproportionate advantage and tried to keep intact communities with shared policy needs.

The panel didn't agree: "The record here shows overwhelmingly — indeed, inescapably — that the Commission drew the boundaries of plaintiffs’ districts predominantly on the basis of race," said the opinion written by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge.

The opinion rejected the commission's defense that it drew districts to preserve communities with shared policy goals, stating that "the Commission put cities like Grosse Pointe, Bloomfield Hills, and Birmingham — some of the wealthiest cities in Michigan, where Porsches and Range Rovers are commonplace, and Cadillacs more numerous than Chevrolets — in the same districts as some of the poorest neighborhoods in Detroit, itself belies the idea that 'communities of interest' were paramount in drawing these districts."

In its 116-page opinion and order, the panel undertook a review of the commission’s line-drawing process, examining the group’s meeting transcripts and public hearings. The panel found the commission adhered to racial demographic quotas the novice mappers received from their hired experts. At various points in the mapping process, commissioners raised concerns about the Detroit-area maps, but the advice from the group's lawyers won out, the panel found.

The record in the case, the panel's opinion reads, "shows that the commissioners did as their experts said — with great difficulty, and misgivings throughout, and over the vociferous objections of Detroit residents at the time — so that, in the end, the Commission limited the percentages of black voters, in the districts at issue here, to the racial targets their experts had given them."

In a Dec. 4 legal brief filed in the lawsuit, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson raised the possibility that if an order to redraw the lines didn't come quickly, lines could not be redrawn in time for the 2024 election cycle when the entire state House is up for reelection.

The panel ordered a redraw of the following districts:

  • House District 1, currently represented by state Rep. Tyrone Carter, D-Detroit.

  • House District 7, currently represented by state Rep. Helena Scott, D-Detroit.

  • House District 8, currently represented by state Rep. Mike McFall, D-Hazel Park.

  • House District 10, currently represented by state Rep. Joe Tate, D-Detroit.

  • House District 11, currently represented by state Rep. Veronica Paiz, D-Harper Woods.

  • House District 12, currently represented by state Rep. Kimberly Edwards, D-Eastpointe.

  • House District 14, currently represented by state Rep. Donavan McKinney, D-Detroit.

  • Senate District 1, currently represented by state Sen. Erika Geiss, D-Detroit.

  • Senate District 3, currently represented by state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit.

  • Senate District 6, currently represented by state Sen. Mary Cavanagh, D-Redford Township.

  • Senate District 8, currently represented by state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak.

  • State Senate District 10, currently represented by state Sen. Paul Wojno, D-Warren.

  • State Senate District 11, currently represented by state Sen. Veronica Klinefelt, D-Eastpointe.

Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, previously called Twitter, @clarajanehen.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story identified the wrong court for Judge Raymond Kethledge. Kethledge is a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. This story has been updated.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Court orders redraw of Detroit area legislative districts