Three federal judges approved new Michigan House of Representatives voting districts on March 27. The map’s passing followed a lawsuit, Agee v. Benson, filed March 23, 2022, that alleged illegal racial gerrymandering in 13 Detroit-area House and Senate voting districts.
The lawsuit originated from 19 Black Detroit residents, one from each of the House and Senate districts, and was filed in the Western District of Michigan of the U.S. District Court. The prosecution claimed that the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission used unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in legislative reapportionment and that the maps violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
Before the March 2022 lawsuit, MICRC planned to redraw district lines by pairing Detroit neighborhoods with suburban communities, reducing the number of majority-Black districts. The new map increases the number of Michigan House districts with a Black majority, which supporters say will expand opportunities for representation in the state legislature. MICRC’s new map draws the 5th District to include parts of Detroit, Oak Park Township and Royal Oak Township, increasing the percentage of the population who is Black from 58.9% to 81.1%. In western Detroit, the proportion of the 4th District’s population who is Black would increase from 54%to 89%, while the proportion of the population who is white would fall from 44% to 4%.
The previously-used redistricting process for legislative boundaries in Michigan occurred every ten years, following the schedule of the decennial census. In 2018, however, the Senate passed a new procedure that established the MICRC, a 13-person group of randomly-selected eligible applicants responsible for creating the state’s congressional, Senate and House district lines. Through a citizen-led approach, the MICRC is required to integrate public hearings and forums in making decisions.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Tom Ivacko, executive director of the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy, said MICRC’s process for redistricting is a community-oriented way to redraw congressional districts.
“When redistricting was done by the state legislature, it was behind closed doors,” Ivacko said. “People had very, very little impact on how the new districts were designed. With the new approach, everything is transparent. All of the Commission’s business is supposed to be done in public with very extensive opportunities for citizen input.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Adam Lacasse, co-chair of College Democrats at the University of Michigan, said the impacts of increased representation for Black voters will not be felt right away, but the redistricting process can provide a platform for voices that have been historically underrepresented in policymaking.
“There is not going to be an immediate change in representation, but it at least allows a different voter base,” Lacasse said. “The person who is currently (in office) has different interests in their districts, so now they are going to be listening to these interest groups and policies. The incumbent is more likely to listen and get those things done.”
Changes to the House maps also alter suburban and urban representation. The 6th, 13th and 14th Districts, previously including parts of Detroit, are now set to be in the suburban areas of Oakland County and Macomb County. This change would increase urban representation.
In alignment with partisan fairness measures used by MICRC, which state that districts shall not provide a political party with a disproportionate advantage, the new maps lean slightly more Republican than the current maps. Despite this change, the new state House districts did not group Democratic incumbents into the same new district, avoiding potential primary battleground districts.
Ivacko said self-sorting among urban and rural voters in Michigan has the potential to skew political representation based on geographical dominance rather than population demographics.
“A number of urban areas in the state have had to be kind of divided up … mixing urban areas with more rural and ex-urban areas,” Ivacko said. “This is because of self-sorting of population, where Democrats move to areas that are dominated by Democrats, and Republicans tend to move to areas that are dominated by Republicans. If you don’t purposely try to compensate for that kind of geopolitical reality, then we would end up with the Republican Party controlling the state legislature again, just because (of) their geographic domination of the land area of the state.”
The court also ruled that six Senate districts were improperly drawn with racial gerrymandering. The panel will reconvene this April to discuss a new plan for the Senate districts ahead of the 2026 general elections.
In an interview with The Daily, Public Policy sophomore Kada Durakovic said while the reapportionment of districts is a step in the right direction, mobilizing marginalized groups is also necessary to enact changes in policy.
“It will be more diverse and inclusive because they are including more voices and more votes,” Durakovic said. “You can still draw the lines and have more (of the) population included but also need to register to vote.”
Daily Staff Reporter Andrew Baum can be reached at asbaum@umich.edu.