A federal judge agreed Thursday with Trump administration lawyers to put on hold a lawsuit filed by four Republican state attorneys general that is attempting to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from numbers used to divvy up congressional seats among states after the once-a-decade census.
Lawyers for the Republican administration said new leaders were in the process of filling roles at the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, and that they have not had time to determine how they want to proceed with the litigation.
The GOP state attorneys from Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia filed the lawsuit against the Commerce Department in the waning days of the Biden administration in January. Since then, the Biden-appointed Census Bureau director has resigned and Trump-nominated Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, replacing Gina Raimondo, a Democrat.
The 14th Amendment states “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states, based on population.
Voters in California and Texas affiliated with a Democratic group had been trying to intervene in the case, claiming the state attorneys general’s lawsuit would harm them by taking away congressional representation and Electoral College votes from their states. The judge struck down their motion and said it would have to be refiled once the hold is lifted.
A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
In his first term, President Donald Trump, a Republican, unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form and signed orders which would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment figures and mandated the collection of citizenship data through administrative records.
Both orders were rescinded when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Mike Schneider, The Associated Press
