A panel of judges have declared unlawful an order from President Donald Trump that excludes illegal immigrants from calculations used to apportion congressional seats based on the population survey conducted during the 2020 Census.
The three judges for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York unanimously ruled that Trump’s presidential memorandum issued on July 21 is in “violation of Congress’s delegation of its constitutional responsibility to count the whole number of persons in each State and to apportion members of the House of Representatives among the States according to their respective numbers.”
The judges’ 86-page decision (pdf) said that federal law required the use of one set of numbers to count people for the census and in the process of redrawing congressional districts, known as apportionment. So long as the illegal immigrants are living in the United States, “illegal aliens qualify as ‘persons in’ a ’state'” who should be counted, the judges wrote.
The judges panel consisted of Circuit Judges Richard Wesley and Peter Hall, both appointed to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, and District Judge Jesse Furman, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama.
The decision can be appealed in the U.S. Supreme Court.
