Plaintiffs say redrawn Michigan maps have destroyed voting bloc but Democratic colleagues call effort Republican ‘power grab’

A lawsuit brought by Black Democrats who partnered with Republican attorneys has undone Michigan’s first independently drawn legislative maps, in a development some other Democrats have labeled a GOP “power grab”.

Republicans for decades controlled all or part of the state legislature, and developed districts that a judge in 2019 characterized as a “gerrymander of historical proportions”. Democrats in 2022 took control of the state government for the first time in over 40 years after a nonpartisan independent redistricting commission implemented more balanced maps.

But a Republican-majority panel of federal district court judges appointed by a Republican circuit court judge ruled in early January that the maps diluted Black voting power and were drawn based on race, thus splitting communities that would otherwise vote in a bloc.

Several Michigan Democrats who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to publicly criticize members of their party expressed dismay because a Republican judiciary now controls the redrawing process, and they fear the new maps will be more favorable to the GOP.