Washington Post: Trump faces multiple lawsuits over directive to exclude undocumented immigrants from representation
Washington Post: Trump faces multiple lawsuits over directive to exclude undocumented immigrants from representation
A flurry of lawsuits have been filed challenging President Trump’s directive to block undocumented immigrants from being counted in congressional apportionment.
The government watchdog organization Common Cause and several cities, groups and individuals filed a complaint, Common Cause v. Trump, on Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. …
The suits were filed in response to a memorandum signed by the president Tuesday that called for an unprecedented change in how House seats are apportioned.
The Common Cause suit seeks an immediate injunction against the president, as well as the Commerce Department, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and the Clerk of the House of Representatives.
It describes the memorandum as “the culmination of a years-long effort to transfer political power en masse from voters of color — chiefly, but not exclusively, Latino voters — to ‘Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.’ ” …
But even if it is likely the directive would lose in court, it is necessary to seek an immediate block to the directive because it could affect the 2020 Census count that is underway, said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s national director of redistricting and representation.
“It could affect response because most immigrant families have a mix of people of different status,” she said.
The directive could also affect the Census Bureau’s process in deciding which households to go to, Feng said. Instead of attempting to count every household in the United States, she said, the bureau could “only go to households which they think fall into the category that the president wants counted.” …
Delivering a population count to Congress that does not reflect the actual U.S. population would have a negative ripple effect throughout the country, said Keshia Morris Desir, Common Cause’s census and mass incarceration project manager.
“When our neighbors aren’t represented and included in all counts, entire communities lose out,” she said in a statement. “Towns and cities across the country would be deprived of vital resources — public schools, firetrucks, and COVID-19 recovery — if millions of families are erased from census counts through the Administration’s attempted end-run around the United States Constitution.”
The Common Cause complaint charges the administration with violating the constitutional requirement that every resident be counted in the census and included for reapportioning congressional districts. It also says the directive violates the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments by diluting a voter’s vote based on place of residency, and by discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin.
In addition to Common Cause, the plaintiffs in that suit include the cities of Atlanta and Patterson, New Jersey, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, a refugee advocacy nonprofit, and individual Latino, African American, Asian American and other voters.