'100% about race': Trial examines legislative maps' impact on Black Detroit voters

Kalamazoo — The first witness in a multi-day trial deciding the legality of Michigan's voting maps told judges Wednesday that the citizens commission tasked with drawing the maps was consistently pressured by its attorney and consultants to lower the number of Black voters in Metro Detroit House and Senate districts.

But at least one other commissioner softened that description, arguing the redistricting commission tried to balance Black voter concentration concerns in Detroit with other required criteria.

Rebecca Szetela, a commissioner on Michigan's Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, told the three-judge panel in Kalamazoo that race and a poorly researched goal to lower the percentage of Black voters in Metro Detroit districts became a driving factor for the commission's consultants and, by extension, the commission itself. The end result, she said, were "spaghetti noodle" districts that stretched between majority-Black Detroit and its White suburbs and ultimately diluted the Black vote.

"It was 100% about race," Szetela said.

Commissioner M.C. Rothhorn said he supported some of Szetela's concerns, but did not believe race dominated the map drawing process. Instead, Rothhorn said, there was a constant "tension" between what was being demanded in public comment and the non-negotiable criteria that had to be met, such as compliance with the Voting Rights Act, equal populations among districts, consideration of communities of interest and contiguous districts.

"It felt like an objective," Rothhorn said in describing the commission's work to lower the Black voting age population to come into compliance with the expert's interpretation of what the Voting Rights Act required in the Detroit area.

"It was an objective that was fluid and we had to balance that objective against other criteria," Rothhorn added.

Testimony is expected to resume Thursday in the trial to decide whether 13 House and Senate districts drawn by the commission in 2021 illegally diluted the Black vote in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment's equal protections clause.

The trial is being held before a three-judge panel that includes federal judges Raymond Kethledge, Paul Maloney and Janet Neff. More than a dozen lawyers are participating in the trial, and several Detroiters and members of the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission were in attendance Wednesday.

The trial will be a major legal test of legislative district maps drawn at the direction of a voter-approved 2018 constitutional amendment that took the power to redraw House and Senate district boundaries out of the hands of politicians and placed it in the hands of a commission of citizens who were selected at random to serve on the panel. If the trial results in an order to redraw the Detroit area maps, it would likely create ripple effects in surrounding districts and cause a headache for incumbents who are redrawn into a different district.

In opening arguments, plaintiffs' lawyer John Bursch said the map drawing process was predominantly based on "racial targets" that violated federal law but were insisted on by the commission's experts. The resulting "spoke-like" districts radiating from Detroit, he said, endanger the chances of voters in the majority Black city to elect a preferred candidate — a chance they're supposed to have under federal law when there is evidence of racially-polarized voting.

"A majority of the commission lacked the courage to go against their purported experts," Bursch said.

Katherine McKnight, an attorney for the commission, rejected Bursch's argument and maintained the maps comply with federal standards. She said the changes weren't based primarily on "racial targets" but on concerns about the map's overall partisan fairness, which required commissioners to stretch Detroit districts into the surrounding suburbs.

It's not unusual to have community pushback on the end product, whether its the Legislature, the courts or an independent commission drawing the maps, McKnight said. But that pushback doesn't mean federal law was violated, she added.

"It turns out redistricting is difficult no matter who does it," McKnight said.

Packing vs. cracking

In her testimony Wednesday morning, Szetela said the goal to lower the Black voting age population in Wayne County districts to between 35% and 40% stemmed from a purported desire by their consultants to "unpack" past districts where black voters made up an extraordinarily high percentage of the district.

Two of the key gerrymandering techniques the Voting Rights Act protects against are referred to as "cracking" and "packing." Packing occurs when map drawers pack a certain population into as few districts as possible in order to minimize the number of seats they can win and, as a result, their influence in the state House and Senate. Cracking occurs when map drawers break apart a certain demographic in order to dilute their influence among several districts.

One of the commission's consultants, Lisa Handley, said the commission could undo past packing without being accused of cracking if they could prove the Black voting age population was enough to elect a Black-preferred candidate. Handley analyzed five past elections and concluded the percentage that guaranteed a preferred candidate lay between 35% and 40% in Wayne County.

That concentration, which was later baked into the commission's map-drawing software, became the standard against which each House and Senate district map was measured, largely at the urging of a second consultant, Bruce Adelson.

"Once we had received that analysis from Lisa Handley, it became all about race," Szetela said of Adelson and General Counsel Julie Pastula's guidance to the commission.

But, Szetela said, she and others began to question Handley's analysis since it didn't account for the influence of past packing, didn't consider Detroit's historically low voter turnout, and included just one primary — the 2018 gubernatorial primary — which included no Black candidates. Primary data is more important than general election data in heavily-Democratic Wayne County, where elections are largely decided in the Democratic primary.

"We're being directed to build districts in these ranges when we have no evidence those ranges are going to work," Szetela said of the commission's dilemma in 2021.

Szetela argued Adelson later tried to soften directives on the Black Voting Age Population, telling commissioners in a closed door session that they could adjust percentages higher if they did so using language that indicated it was being done to protect communities of interest. Szetela alleged Adelson was trying to create a record in the final days of map drawing that was less reliant on race and would have better changes of standing up to court scrutiny.

Commissioner Juanita Curry, a Detroit resident, said she also had concerns that Detroit wasn't getting a "fair deal" and had been "chopped up." But she also felt race wasn't the priority commissioners were being asked to consider.

"My concern was that it was things being taken away from us, the people in Detroit," Curry said.

Commissioner Rhonda Lange said she had general concerns regarding a lack of transparency in the board's process. She also said she felt like there was pressure to needlessly lower Detroit's Black voting age population during the mapping process.

"We were looking at numbers based on race and not on what the community was asking for," Lange said.

Commissioner Erin Wagner agreed with Szetela's description and also express frustration with the redistricting process.

"We were 13 citizens who didn't know what we were doing and we were listening to people who we thought were experts," Wagner said.

Commission's decisions on trial

The Michigan Legislature typically has redrawn its districts every 10 years by allowing the party in power to dictate those boundaries; but, in 2018, voters approved a new system in which a group of 13 randomly selected citizens would lead the process. Michigan's Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission was comprised of four Republicans, four Democrats and five nonpartisan members.

The commission finalized its maps in December 2021. The adopted maps reduced the number of majority-Black districts from 11 to seven in the House and from two to zero in the Senate. Where some of the previous Detroit area maps contained more than 90% of the Black voting age population, the new maps diluted those concentrations to 35%-55%. 

In March 2022, several Black Metro Detroit residents filed suit in federal court. They argued that 10 state House districts and seven Senate districts in the Detroit area diluted the voice of Black voters in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The suit was filed against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the 13 members of the commission.

In August, Kethledge, Maloney and Neff said claims against seven House districts and six Senate districts could proceed to trial to discern whether the redistricting commission "went too far in lowering Black voter percentages in Detroit-area districts."

Of the 13 districts going to trial, six were won by Black lawmakers in November 2022; four of those six are from Detroit.

The commission was required under state and federal law to balance several factors in drawing the maps, such as equal population distribution, contiguous districts, and compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which protects a variety of voting rights including protections against discriminatory gerrymandering.

Experts told commissioners that data from the 2018 primary − which included no Black candidates − showed there was a likelihood White Democratic voters outside Detroit would support a Black-preferred candidate in the primary so majority-Black representation in a district wasn't needed.

During nearly 10 hours of public comment in October 2021, Black Detroiters and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights spoke out in opposition to draft maps and voiced concerns that the maps diluted the Black vote so much that the maps violated the Voting Rights Act.

Szetela, in July 2022, said commissioners were pressured to draw state Legislature seats with lower percentages of Black residents who are eligible to vote. She said she could not say "with any degree of confidence" whether the district maps the panel drew will allow Black-preferred candidates a chance to win primaries in majority-Democratic districts. Lange and Wagner wrote similar dissents.

eleblanc@detroitnews.com