Supreme Court To Hear Case On Memo About Census, Unauthorized Immigrants - NPR

Supreme Court has agreed to a speedy review of President Trump's attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reallocate seats in Congress.

The hearing is set to take place a month before federal law says the latest state population counts for reapportioning the 435 seats in the House of Representatives among the states are due to the president.

The Supreme Court rejected his attempt last year and should do so again," said Dale Ho, a lead plaintiffs' attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who successfully argued against the now-blocked citizenship question the administration wanted on the 2020 census forms.

Federal law requires the president to deliver to Congress "a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State" based on the once-a-decade census.

In September, a lower federal court in Manhattan declared Trump's memo an illegal overreach of the president's limited authority, as delegated by Congress, over the census.

Even if the Supreme Court overturns that ruling, however, it is not clear if Trump would practically be able to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the results of this year's census.

In a statement to NPR, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — who oversees the bureau and is legally required to deliver the state numbers to the president — said that he will "release this Census data publicly, and in keeping with past practice, will do so simultaneously with its delivery to the President," as NPR reported on Wednesday