Gerrymandering decision big — if it stands

A state federal appeals court ruled Michigan's congressional and legislative districts were drawn in 2011 with such a heavy partisan bent that they must be redrawn.

It's a decision that, if not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, will mean Lansing's 8th Congressional District, for sure, will be redrawn. Maybe U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin's Holly home will be in 8th. Maybe it won't.

The results in the League of Women Voters' suit also means state Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr.'s time in the state Senate could come to a premature end. Like seven other second-term state senators, the Constitution reads that an individual can only be elected to a state Senate term two times.

Hertel won his first four-year term in 2014 and his second four-year term in 2018. Hertel couldn't run against if special elections were called for 2020.

Instead, first-term state senators like Sen. Tom Barrett would need to run for reelection after only serving two years and wouldn't be eligible to run again in the regularly scheduled 2022 election if he were successful. Both Hertel's 23rd District and Barrett's 24th District may end up getting changed slightly, but likely not substantively.

The implications for state Reps like Sarah Anthony or Julie Brixie aren't as drastic. It's not likely their districts would change much, if at all. Also, state representatives run every two years anyway, so a special 2020 election wouldn't faze them either.

They will be impacted by the political theater: Republicans and Democrats cutting deals among themselves and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to draw new, non-gerrymandered maps by Aug. 1. If they don't do it, the court will do it for them.

Also, whatever lines come out of this emergency, court-ordered redistricting will only be in effect for two years. In 2021, the citizen redistricting panel Proposal 1 created takes effect. That panel will draw the lines for the elections from 2022-2030.

Republican legislators will take steps to appeal the ruling this week for numerous reasons. For one, they believe their maps follow the law. For two, they don't want the legal theory that the appeals court used to rule the maps unconstitutional to become precedent.

For three, they don't want to run state Senate elections during a presidential election for the first time since 1964 with President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket.

But numerous legal and political sources are expressing doubt that the 6th Court of Appeals decision will stand. One unnamed legal source is confident the lower court decision "will be reversed" by the nation's highest court and that ruling could come sooner than later.

The high court is expected to rule this month or next on whether the federal courts have jurisdiction in reapportionment cases or whether that authority rests with solely the states. North Carolina and Maryland also have gerrymandering cases that may impact Michigan.

If the Supremes concluded this is a federal issue, opponents of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals mandate will contend the decision is flawed in that the panel should have decided the plaintiffs did not have the standing to sue. There is also a dispute that the plaintiffs did not prove there was gerrymandering on a district-by-district basis which the GOP believes is required.

The defendants also believe that the expert mathematician hired by the other side "jimmied" the data to "reach the conclusion that he wanted."  During a recent court hearing, GOP lawyers asked the expert for his computer source code so that they could check his math, but he told the court he lost that code.

When it's all said and done, Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consultants gave the case a 5% chance of surviving. He predicted Republicans will purposely "stick something into the spokes" in an attempt to run out the shot clock on any outstanding case if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't intervene first.

"Why in the world would you participate?" Grebner asked. "The only thing you'd do is miss your deadlines. That would be the goal. You'd file objections and maybe you'd file something that is incorrect and you might complain about the other side and you might rush into random courts with emergency filings to see if you could get someone to file an emergency stay somewhere to screw up something else."

"This thing is so fragile, it's going to be easy to screw this up," he added.

(Kyle Melinn, of the Capitol newsletter MIRS, is at melinnky@gmail.com.)