• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. census>

Vows on Hill and in court to stop Trump from keeping immigrants out of House count

Brian Johnson, Medill School
July 22, 2020
U.S. census mailing
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Democrats and civil liberties groups are threatening legislation and lawsuits to prevent President Trump from excluding undocumented immigrants from the population counts used to apportion House seats for the next decade.

The president directed the government on Tuesday to provide the states with census numbers that exclude millions of people living in the country illegally — setting up a potential balance of powers fight as well as a constitutional dispute over whether congressional districts should be drawn based on numbers of people, as has been the long-standing practice, or only citizens.

Civil rights groups gave notice in federal court Wednesday that they would fight Trump's effort. The American Civil Liberties Union readied a separate lawsuit. The House Oversight and Reform Committee announced it would convene an emergency hearing next week and may write a bill to thwart the president. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed that Democrats "will vigorously contest the president's unconstitutional and unlawful attempt to impair the census."


The Census Bureau is in the middle of its once-a-decade head count, among the most important and extensive bureaucratic undertakings of a functioning democracy. The results will not only determine how many of the 435 House seats shift to the fastest growing states at the expense of other places, but it will also provide numbers for drawing election lines at the state, county and city level. The numbers will also determine the distribution over the next decade of $1.5 trillion in federal spending that's allocated by demographic formula.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

More than 62 percent of households have responded, and census takers last week started appearing at the homes where residents haven't responded. The bureau this week mailed out 34 million postcards to households reminding them to answer the census questionnaire as required by law.

"It is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status," Trump said in a memorandum Tuesday. It said that states with undocumented immigrants should not be given more representatives as this would only encourage them to continue to harbor such people.

If Trump gets what he wants, which could end up requiring the Supreme Court to disregard the consensus understanding of the Constitution, the effect would be more seats shifting to Republican states instead of Democratic ones.

"The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census," Dale Ho, the voting rights chief at the ACLU, said in a statement. "President Trump cannot pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court. His latest attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities will be found unconstitutional. We'll see him in court, and win, again."

Last year, Trump's effort to put a citizenship question on the census was derailed by the high court, making it difficult to determine how many undocumented immigrants are in he country.

In a statement accompanying his memorandum, however, Trump noted that federal agencies "have been collecting the information needed to conduct an accurate census and inform responsible decisions about public policy, voting rights, and representation in Congress."

Under that executive order, which civil rights groups are already fighting in federal court, agencies are to provide the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, with data and records that could be used to separate citizens and noncitizens.

The president's latest move, "if carried out, could upend the balance of power," said Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. "This move by the White House to ignore a significant percentage of the population and summarily redefine how we apportion representative power in this country is inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional."

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said Trump's action highlights his "inexhaustible contempt for our constitutional system and the rule of law. The U.S. Constitution requires 'an actual enumeration' of the 'whole number of persons' in the country for 'apportioning representatives among the states in Congress.'"

As evidence that his action is legal, Trump cited a unanimous 1992 Supreme Court decision that found the Commerce Department could apportion members of the military serving overseas at their home of record: "Congress has provided that it is 'the president's personal transmittal of the report to Congress' that 'settles the apportionment' of representatives among the States, and the president's discretion to settle the apportionment is more than ceremonial or ministerial and is essential "to the integrity of the process."

Groups in favor of less immigration praised the decision.

"The process of including illegal aliens in the census count for the purpose of reapportionment, as it has been practiced in recent decades, is fundamentally unfair to law-abiding Americans, and the president should be applauded for taking long overdue action to safeguard their interests and constitutional rights," said Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

However, the courts have rejected attempts by FAIR to remove undocumented immigrants from apportionment. The Supreme Court already struck down Trump's attempt to add a citizenship question to the census because it was added with the intention of undercounting undocumented immigrants and lowering the amount of funds and representatives these areas have.

From Your Site Articles
  • WI governor plans to shame GOP out of gerrymandering - The Fulcrum ›
  • Democrats wins in Virginia, Kentucky could lead to reforms - The ... ›
  • Experts identify the worst examples of gerrymandering - The Fulcrum ›
  • Trump's fight to count citizens and non-citizens: 5 questions answered ›
  • Americans abroad aren't counted in the census - The Fulcrum ›
  • The census case offers a major test of the Supreme Court - The Fulcrum ›
  • Biden orders inclusion of undocumented in reapportionment - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Trump signs order targeting undocumented immigrants in the US ... ›
  • Why the U.S. Census Bureau could have trouble complying with ... ›
  • Executive Order on Collecting Information about Citizenship Status ... ›
  • Trump executive order excludes unauthorized immigrants from US ... ›
census

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

J.H. Snider
22h

Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Neil Hare
22h

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
22h

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Joe Weston
27 January

With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers

Barbara Rodriguez, The 19th
27 January
Videos

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff

Video: Veterans for Political Innovation - Who we are

Our Staff

Video: Want to fight polarization? Take a vacation!

Our Staff

Video: Kevin McCarthy is Speaker, but he's got a tough job ahead

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday End of Year

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
22h

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Podcast: How the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack impacted politics

Our Staff
26 January

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
25 January
Recommended
Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

State
Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Big Picture
Podcast: Separating news from noise

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Podcasts
Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcasts
Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Pop Culture