Counting The Numbers > Fast-Tracking The 2020 Census: Trump's Final Supreme Court Showdown on Immigration Policies

The 80-minute session Monday is Trump’s biggest remaining Supreme Court argument in a presidency defined by polarizing legal battles over immigration.The court has put the latest census case on a fast track, making a ruling possible by the end of the year. But the challenge is just one of several hurdles Trump will have to overcome to accomplish his goal.

The case is Trump v. New York, 20-366.

In the case directly before the justices, a three-judge panel in New York said the plan runs afoul of the U.S. Census Act, which requires the Commerce secretary to show the “tabulation of total population by states” and says the president must give Congress “the whole numbers of persons in each state.”

Critics of the Trump push say those words leave no room for interpretation. That’s an argument that could resonate with Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees -- Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett -- all of whom advocate interpreting laws strictly according to their text.

Census Gives Trump a Final Supreme Court Showdown on Immigration

By Greg Stohr

Bloomberg.com |

November 27, 2020, 2:00 AM EST

President Donald Trump’s administration has one last blockbuster showdown at the Supreme Court over his divisive immigration policies, and this one goes to the heart of how U.S. political power is allocated.

In an argument set for Monday, the administration will seek the right to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count used to divvy up congressional seats and federal funds. The move would change more than two centuries of practice in a nation that has always counted non-citizen residents, . .

Presidential Discretion

The Trump administration contends the laws leave room for the president to exclude people who are in the country illegally. The administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, argued in court papers that the phrase “persons in each state” means “inhabitants,” a term whose application requires the use of judgment.

“The president need not treat all illegal aliens as ‘inhabitants’ of the states and thereby allow their defiance of federal law to distort the allocation of the people’s representatives,” Wall argued.

Supporters of the president’s effort say his approach is long overdue.

“What’s at stake is whether the American people are represented in Congress or whether others who are not part of the American people are also represented in Congress,” said Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

The administration must also defend against contentions that the plan is unconstitutional. In a separate case in California, a court said Trump was violating a constitutional provision that requires congressional seats to be apportioned according to the “whole number of persons in each state. . ."