Supreme Court Dismisses Lawsuit on Trump’s Plan to Exclude Undocumented Immigrants From 2020 Census

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit over the Trump Administration’s attempts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census counts to be used for apportionment of seats in Congress among the States. That means that the issue may need to be litigated later, if the Trump plan remains in effect and ends up changing the apportionment.

“The Trump Administration should discontinue its attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census,” said Paul Smith, vice president at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “The Supreme Court seems content to run out the clock on the Trump Administration, anticipating that it will fail to put into action a plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census before January 20. Regardless of whether the Trump Administration has time to gather the data they are seeking, their plan is discriminatory and attempts to punish states with large immigrant communities by denying them fair representation in government. Their ploy is purely political and undercuts central principles of our democracy, ignoring the U.S. Constitution in the process.”

The U.S. Constitution mandates that the "whole number of persons" living in each state be counted to figure out how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes are allocated to each state.