Detroit Free Press:

Michigan’s congressional districts – drawn for the first time by an independent redistricting commission – survived a legal challenge from Republicans with a Friday ruling from a three-judge panel upholding the new lines. 

In a unanimous opinion, the federal judges – all nominees of former President George W. Bush, a Republican – rejected the allegation that the new districts contain unjustifiably large population differences in violation of a constitutional requirement to draw districts containing the same number of people. 

The Republicans who sued the redistricting commissioners and Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wanted the court to suspend the use of the commission’s congressional map in the 2022 elections and require the commissioners to redraw the districts. The panel denied the request.

The opinion written by Judge Raymond Kethledge, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, called the population deviation in the new congressional map “small” and the commission’s justification for it “undisputedly legitimate.”