DETROIT – Suddenly, Michigan’s political future is up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last week, on April 25, three federal judges issued a unanimous decision that, unless it is overturned, may drastically change Michigan politics — and government — over the next two years and beyond.
They ruled that Republicans had so completely gerrymandered Michigan congressional and legislative districts in 2011 that what they did was not only outrageous, but illegal and unconstitutional.
And then came the truly stunning part: They ordered the legislature to draw new, fairer boundaries for nine congressional districts, 15 Michigan House of Representative districts and 10 State Senate districts, and gave them till August 1 to do it.
The judges, two of whom were appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and one by Republican President George H.W. Bush, said if they don’t like what the legislature does, they will draw their own lines and impose them for the 2020 elections.
What’s more, they are requiring that special elections be held in 2020 for the 10 affected senate districts, which normally wouldn’t be on the ballot until 2022. That may cause more turmoil two years later, by shortening the terms of those who win, since Michigan’s term limits specify that no person can be elected to the state senate more than twice, unless there is a special election to fill a vacancy.
Nor is that all.
Redrawing all these districts will also affect many adjacent ones, just as knocking one domino down is bound to affect the others. Exactly how many state legislative districts will change is hard to know.
But it seems likely that every congressional district
boundary will change somewhat, including the five not affected.
Shell-shocked Republicans
announced they would immediately appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which is likely to rule next month on two other gerrymandering cases in
Maryland and North Carolina. Those rulings may indicate what they will do in
Michigan.
But their response to the Michigan GOP’s appeal may come even before that, if the highest court grants a stay that would delay the three federal judges’ ruling taking effect till they rule.
Robert Sedler, a distinguished professor of constitutional law at Wayne State University, noted “The Supreme Court has not specifically held that the Constitution prohibits political gerrymandering.” But he added, “the Court’s action on the stay motion will give us an idea of where the Court is heading.”
That’s because it takes five votes to grant a stay. Unless a majority of the justices do so, it seems likely the ruling will stand.
The ruling, which gives Democrats more than most ever dreamed, came in response to a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters. Ironically, new Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, herself a Democrat, offered a less radical compromise after she took office in January. She would have settled for redrawing only 11 state house districts and left congressional and state senate boundaries alone.
But the GOP balked and the federal judges rejected her offer. Rejecting the settlement now turns out to be a huge blunder on the part of the Republicans – who even then, should have known better.
For one thing, while both parties often have been guilty of drawing districts to their own advantage, the Michigan GOP got indecently greedy. One political scientist from George Washington University testified that the boundaries for Michigan state senate seats “have more pro-Republican bias than 99.7 percent of all state legislative maps across the country,” since the early 1970s.
Time after time, Democratic candidates for both the Michigan House and Senate have gotten more total votes than their GOP opponents – and ended up with far fewer seats.
That happened again last November, when despite a statewide Democratic landslide, Republicans ended up with a 58-52 majority in the state house and a 22-16 margin in the senate.
What was worse for Republicans is that not only did they do this, they left a bunch of “smoking guns” in the form of emails from Republican legislative staffers during the last redistricting in 2011.
They make it clear that Republicans were attempting to gerrymander the districts for partisan advantage. One even speaks of their desire to “cram Dem garbage” in as few districts as possible.
Despite this, Michigan Republicans hope a hard- right majority on the nation’s highest court will work to their advantage.
Those against the judges’ ruling do have two arguments that may be more reasonable: Any new boundaries based on the 2010 census are bound to be much out of date.
Also, every state draws new legislative and congressional boundaries once a decade, based on the newest census, which will be held in less than a year. Something else is new as well.
Starting with the next cycle, the Michigan legislature will no longer have anything to do with redistricting. Fed up with gerrymandering, voters last fall amended the state constitution to turn redistricting over to a bipartisan citizen panel in 2021.
Should the state really be forced to draw new, necessary inaccurate lines now for a single election?
Democrats, by and large, hope the answer is yes. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is having no success getting a GOP-dominated legislature to even consider her plan to fix the state’s roads.
There’s an outside chance that new elections next year with new boundaries could give Democrats a majority in at least one house.
And perhaps a greater one that lawmakers suddenly running in more evenly divided districts may be willing to compromise.
