Supreme Court Agrees to Rule on Census Case Excluding Undocumented Immigrants

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Trump administration's plan to exclude millions of undocumented immigrants from the census count.

The Trump administration's legal team argued that this plan is allowed by law, so they are hoping that the Supreme Court's three Donald Trump appointees will embrace this idea, reported Associated Press.

The census case had already gone through lower courts, but it only received repeatedly rejections.

It was Trump's latest and will likely be his last move in hard-line immigration policy to reach the Supreme Court.

Removing undocumented immigrants from the census would cause some drastic changes to congressional seats in some states, said a New York Post report.

In California alone, two or three seats could be lost if undocumented immigrants get cut out of the 2020 census based on administration estimates of some two million such residents.

Democratic States Could Suffer If Supreme Court Favors Trump

How the high court would likely vote on the matter is still largely unknown, but if did does decide to favor Trump in this case, big Democratic states would experience most of the impact.

Some of these states include California and New York that rejected the case in their lower courts. These states are also home to large populations of immigrants.

Another court in Washington said a similar challenge to the administration's plan was premature, and the same argument was brought to the high court.

The Hill said in its report that Republicans will likely experience increase in House seats for the next 10 years if the proposal was followed.

This case gave the high court a post-Thanksgiving legal battle and another high-profile case for newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

But all of these may end up moot if the past November 3 election ends up getting certified as a win for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Read also: Lawsuit Claims Census Takers Pressured to Falsify Data

Cutting Out Immigrants from Census Strays from Traditional Process

According to The Hill, the president's pledge to remove undocumented immigrants from the census strays from the centuries-old process of the census.

"What Trump wants to do would be a radical break from that. The losers wouldn't be individual people," said Dale Ho, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

As Ho pointed out, it would be entire states and communities losing representation once undocumented residents of a state get cut out of the annual head count used to apportion the House.

Usually, collecting census data had to be finished by December 31, but it was extended to April 2021 due to the health hazards of the coronavirus pandemic.

But over the summer, the president demanded the original deadline to be maintained.

The situation became further complicated when "certain anomalies" were discovered that would prevent the Census Bureau from meeting the deadline.

Trump requested a separate tally of undocumented immigrants with the intention to take the numbers off the total per state ahead of reporting to the House.

Other than congressional seats, pulling out undocumented immigrants from the census could also dramatically damage federal funding from different government services.

There is a possibility for less populated location to get more funding than cities.

Read also: Supreme Court Allows Temporary Halt to 2020 Census