For decades, the migration of Baltimore’s ethnic groups from the city followed a distinct pattern.

Jewish families moved from the city’s Reservoir Hill and Druid Hill neighborhoods to Woodlawn, Pikesville and then Owings Mills, all in Baltimore County. Black residents leaving the city followed a similar path, expanding into Randallstown, because Jewish homeowners were often the only people who would sell houses to Black Marylanders. Polish and Italian immigrants followed Eastern Avenue from Little Italy and Highlandtown to Perry Hall, White Marsh and Middle River.

That began to change over the last decade as upper-middle-class Black Marylanders instead headed east, near onetime working-class white communities between Essex and White Marsh. Drawn by new housing, a Maryland Area Rail Commuter station and easy access to Interstate 95, the new Black residents were soon joined by Hispanic and Asian residents.

Now some of the new residents want new things: a library, a grocery store and representation on the Baltimore County Council that reflects their diversity. They may get it.

The Baltimore County Council is expanding from seven districts to nine in 2026, after voters approved the change last fall. What that will look like is unclear.

The council approved an initial map as part of a compromise to put expansion on the fall ballot, but after residents demanded more feedback, it created a redistricting committee to draw a racially balanced map for the county of 850,000 residents. These are maps where minority candidates have a chance of winning; the districts needn’t be majority Black, but if they are close to 50% non-white, they have a better chance of diverse representation. In the 2022 elections, Black candidates ran in five of the seven districts in Baltimore County; the only one who prevailed was incumbent Julian Jones, whose district is majority Black. The council is also all male.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, though, has made a map with a Black, Indigenous and People of Color district on the east side, along with three majority-Black districts on the west. Although the ACLU offers two scenarios to make its BIPOC East Side district work, both of the maps take a chunk out of the current Towson-centered district — mostly long-established Black inner-Beltway communities such as Loch Raven and Holland Hill.

The civil rights group considers the map more than a suggestion. ACLU attorney Debbie Jeon has been suing — and winning — over exclusionary redistricting maps in Maryland for 30 years. Recent victories include Federalsburg and Wicomico County on the Eastern Shore, where at-large elections were shutting out Black candidates. In a previous redistricting lawsuit, before the 2022 election, Baltimore County lost and had to pay its private law firm nearly $1 million.

Along with the Baltimore County branch of the NAACP, Jeon has made clear that the ACLU will pursue legal action again if the maps do not provide opportunities for diverse candidates to win. Black residents make up a third of the county’s population, Hispanic residents about 14% and Asian residents about 7%.

“The ACLU and NAACP urge the Redistricting Commission to seize this unique opportunity by creating a nine-district plan that fully reflects the County’s glorious diversity and brings Baltimore County into full compliance — in letter and spirit — with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Jeon and her colleagues wrote to the commission last month.

East Side community activist Shafiyq Hinton applauded her efforts.

“My famous line to the council is, ‘These maps are nothing more than the illusion of inclusion,’ ” said Hinton, who is Black. “You’re not giving us any more representation in this process, and you’re cutting off the fastest-growing neighborhoods.”

But Councilmember Mike Ertel, who is white and whose district includes Towson, said peeling away the Loch Raven corridor as well as historically Black neighborhoods in Rosedale and instead giving him Timonium and Cockeysville will disconnect the older, inner-Beltway communities from like-minded neighbors.

“It makes no sense, but they’re basically trying to make my district predominantly white and saying, ‘Let’s just keep the Towson guy away from the rest of it,’ ” Ertel said.

Hinton and Ertel ran against each other in 2022. Hinton, whose day job is in health care, enjoyed support from developers and generally supports more growth. Ertel, who works for an insurance agency, cut his teeth as a West Towson community activist. He grew up, though, just across the city line from Overlea, and has an appreciation for the district’s working-class touchstones, including the old Hazelwood Inn — a Greek-owned diner where his family celebrated special occasions.

Both said their concern for the district’s future shape is not about them getting elected but about the needs of the districts.

Hinton’s primary concern is filling in his partially empty neighborhood in upscale Greenleigh, a planned mixed-use community in Middle River where homes sell for an average of $700,000. The developer has gotten approval to build 3,300 homes, far fewer than the 9,000 originally envisioned.

Commercial space is largely unoccupied. A promised grocery store has not arrived, Hinton said, because the people aren’t there to support it. He drives his daughter 15 minutes out of the way to elementary school because the county has not approved a cut across a main road.

The current councilmember, David Marks, leans on the Essex Middle River Civic Council a lot; its members often testify at council meetings. Hinton said the group is older and doesn’t represent residents with new-development concerns like his.

Marks bristles at such comments and considers the ACLU maps an effort to limit Republican voices. The initial maps that the council drew reunited Republican-leaning waterfront communities and are now split across three districts. The civic council wants to bring them back together, as does Marks.

“If Shafiyq Hinton wants to run for office on a platform of increasing development in Greenleigh, then that’s a conversation he’s going to have to have with the many residents who don’t want excessive growth,” Marks said.

Ertel’s constituent services include picking up discarded tires in Holland Hill, cleaning alleys in the Loch Raven corridor, shutting down a nuisance hookah lounge and keeping an eye on drug dealers near a Parkville shopping center. A pet cemetery, covered with overgrown vines, has vexed previous councilmembers.

“Mike is in my neighborhood so much, people think he lives here,” said state Sen. Carl Jackson, who is Black and represents the area.

In many ways, Ertel said, this part of the district mirrors his own life: a childhood close to the city line, with many friends in Rosedale and Overlea, and family and community connections in Towson.

Redistricting committee members will submit their map in June. Until then, they work around a long table, moving squares around screens, seeking balance.

Ertel did more than just support the council expansion. He ran on it and helped persuade Republican colleagues to cede some of their own power to pass it. He hopes committee members remember while moving squares that they are there to help communities get better representation.

And Hinton, of course, is hoping for the same.