Court-appointed expert says redrawn Michigan House map passes constitutional muster

Updated, 9:59 a.m., 3/20/24

A special master has determined that a redrawn map of 15 Southeast Michigan House districts has met constitutional standards and achieved the proper racial balance as directed by a three-judge panel.

That was the conclusion of Bernard Grofman, who was appointed as a special master following a December ruling that the legislative boundaries drawn up by the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) in 2022 violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by diluting Black voting power in the Detroit-area legislative districts. 

Michigan redistricting commission finalizes revised state House voting map

“Despite the considerable scope of the changes made from the rejected 2022 map to the 2024 proposed remedial map, I would characterize the new MI-IRC map as narrowly tailored to remedy the previously found constitutional violations,” said Grofman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine and an expert on redistricting. 

The new map, which is named Motown Sound FC E1, was created following a series of MICRC public meetings held in order to comply with the decision of U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond M. Kethledge and U.S. District Court Judges Paul L. Maloney and Janet T. Neff.

“The scope of the 2024 remedial redrawing was very extensive in terms of total population shifts across the 15 districts,” said Grofman, who identified key features of the new map that included a reduction in the number of districts with pieces of both Wayne and Macomb counties and Wayne and Oakland counties, Dearborn remaining intact and increasing the number of Black citizen voting age majority districts.

“From my social science perspective, I view the (MICRC) as having been able to address and remedy the race-related constitutional defects in its previous map, but the decision as to whether its remedy is an adequate one is, of course, a legal decision for this Court,” concluded Grofman.

The maps used in the 2022 election were the first ones designed by the MICRC, which was the result of a constitutional amendment voters passed in 2018. The panel has four Republicans, four Democrats and five independents. Previously, the Legislature was responsible for redistricting with the governor having signoff.

The lawsuit that forced the redraw, Agee v. Benson was filed in 2022 by 19 African-American Detroiters who live in seven Michigan House districts and six Michigan Senate districts that each include a portion of Detroit. As part of the redrawing process, however, the commission ended up reconfiguring a total of 15 House districts. 

The new Senate maps don’t need to be finalized until 2026, when most Senate seats are up for grabs.

Earlier this month, the plaintiffs filed an objection to the new House map, alleging it was “endorsing an incumbent-protection plan that locks in the racial gerrymander this Court struck down, breaking communities of interest to yet again pair poor, Black Detroit voters with rich, white, suburban voters…”

However, the MICRC responded with its own filing which countered that the plaintiffs’ arguments lacked legal merit while the redrawn Motown Sound map “received more than five times the favorable comments as the plan with the next-highest total received, and that plan (called Spirit of Detroit) was substantially similar to Motown Sound. Together, the two maps received more than 25 times the favorable comments as the plan with the next-highest total.”

A March 29 deadline is set for the three-judge panel to accept the redrawn MICRC map. If the court determines the maps still fall short of legal standards, a map from the court-appointed special master will be considered as the filing deadline for the 2024 election approaches on April 23. 

This story has been updated with the correct date the constitutional amendment passed establishing the MICRC.