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U.S. Supreme Court justices are expected today to review President Donald Trump’s decision to exclude illegal immigrants from population totals used to allocate congressional districts to states, a facet of his tough stance on immigration during his last few weeks in office.
The court, which has a Conservative 6-3 majority, including three Trump-appointed judges, is expected to hear an 80-minute argument by teleconference. Judges rule on the case on an accelerated schedule, with a decision due before the end of the year. This would make it difficult for President-elect Joe Biden to revisit Trump’s plan if it is upheld.
Opponents of Trump’s July directive include various New York-led states, cities, counties, and immigrant rights groups. They argued that the Republican president’s decision could leave several million people unstated and lose seats for California, Texas and New Jersey in the US House of Representatives.
Residential districts are based on the count of a state’s population in the decennial national census.
Lawrence Hurley reports for Reuters that the challengers said Trump’s plan would dilute the political clout of states with more illegal immigrants, including heavily democratic California, by underestimating their true population and depriving them of seats in the House. If California loses districts in the House, it would likely mean Democrats would lose House seats, to Republicans.
There are an estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.
Until now, the government’s practice has been to count all people regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. The US Constitution requires that the distribution of seats in the House be based on the “total number of people in each state.”
The challengers argued that Trump’s policies violate both the Constitution and the Census Act, a federal law that describes how the census is conducted. Trump’s lawyers have said in court documents that he acted within his authority and that the challengers did not have the legal standing to bring the case.
The census itself does not collect data on a person’s citizenship or immigration status. The Trump administration is said to be basing its numbers on data collected elsewhere, although it has not explained the methods used. The US Census Bureau, a spokesperson said, “will make public the methods used to provide state-level counts once we finalize them.”
By law, the president must send Congress a report in early January with the population of each state and their authorized number of House districts.
Once states have been assigned their districts, they draw the district boundaries themselves, which will be used first in the legislative elections of 2022.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Trump’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the census. Critics said the issue was aimed at scaring immigrants off from participating in the population count and artificially reducing the population in strongly democratic areas, also for the benefit of Republicans.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined Liberal justices in the decision. But the addition of Trump-appointed third person Amy Coney Barrett to the court changes its dynamic.
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