The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the census on the grounds that it was premature.
The decennial U.S. Census was conducted this year, and nearly 20 states, including New York State, and several human rights groups sued over the exclusion of people living in the U.S. illegally from the count. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 to dismiss the lawsuit challenging the census on the grounds that it was premature to file a lawsuit. The justices’ vote showed a clear tendency to split positions, with six conservative justices supporting the Trump administration and three liberal justices holding different views.
If there is no further action by the Supreme Court, President Trump’s census can be carried out immediately in accordance with the original plan, that is, in the census report to be sent to Congress in January next year, completely excluding the statistics of illegal immigrants.
The Supreme Court ruled on the 18th that the federal government has not yet announced which illegal immigrants will be excluded from the census, and that it is premature for multi-state governments and civil rights groups to sue on their own.
The census is an important basis for government decisions, and the Supreme Court’s ruling means that the allocation of state seats in the House of Representatives and the receipt of federal grants will be affected by differences in the way population programs are conducted.
In July, Trump issued a memo that foreshadowed unprecedented changes to the census that no president has ever made before, namely the exclusion of millions of non-U.S. citizens.
Jeffrey Wall, the Trump administration’s Supreme Court litigator and acting federal solicitor general, told the justices during oral arguments in November that Trump wanted to exclude from the census foreign nationals who are in immigration detention and under deportation orders.
But Wall, responding to a question from liberal Justice Elena Kagan, said he would not rule out excluding a broader range of immigrants from the census, including Dreamers who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). We’re not sure about that at this point, and we don’t know what the president will decide,” Wall said.
Under the rules, the Trump administration must send the census results to Congress next January. The federal Census Bureau must send the results to Trump by Dec. 31 this year.
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