State AG: Redistricting panel shouldn’t have met privately

LANSING » Michigan’s redistricting commission should not have held a private meeting to discuss memos related to racially polarized voting and the federal Voting Rights Act’s requirement that people have an opportunity to elect minority candidates, Attorney General Dana Nessel said Monday.

The independent citizens panel, which was empowered by voters to draw maps instead of partisan lawmakers, called the controversial closed session with its lawyer on Oct. 27 to discuss two memos, titled “Voting Rights Act” and “The History of Discrimination in the State of Michigan and its Influence on Voting.” It was its first meeting after receiving public feedback about drafted congressional and legislative lines at hearings across the state.

In Detroit, residents and even the state’s civil rights director had criticized how the proposals had no majority-Black districts. The current maps, drawn in 2011, have 15.

Nessel, in a legal opinion issued at the request of two legislators, said matters discussed privately at the meeting presumably provided commission members with certain legal parameters and historical context to consider when developing, drafting and adopting redistricting plans.

“If this presumption is correct, then the Commission was conducting ‘business’ that should have been done in an open meeting,” she wrote to Republican Sen. Ed McBroom of Vulcan and Democratic Sen. Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor, citing the state constitutional amendment that created the panel. It requires “all” business to be conducted at open meetings.

Nessel rejected that the private discussion was justified due to attorney-client privilege, saying it is “repugnant to the constitution to go into a closed session to discuss a memorandum that is not confidential and must ultimately be published.”