President Donald Trump's attempt to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to divvy up congressional seats is headed for a post-Thanksgiving Supreme Court showdown.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/supreme-court-2020-census/2020/11/28/id/999084/
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Tags: Immigration | Trump Administration | Supreme Court | 2020 Census
High Court Takes Up Census Case, as Other Count Issues Loom
Saturday, 28 November 2020 09:36 AM
…A spokesman for the Biden campaign didn't respond to an email inquiry.
Even if everything is done on time, the House, which will remain under Democratic control next year, might reject the apportionment numbers on the grounds that they aren't what Congress asked the Republican administration to provide, said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
“If the president turns over something that isn’t plausibly what they asked for, they don’t have to accept it and they don’t have to transmit to the states,” Levitt said.
The Census Bureau's announcement about anomalies also underscores pandemic-related worries about the quality of the data. The time allotted for correcting errors and filling in gaps in data collection was cut in half by the administration's decision to stick to the year-end deadline and accommodate Trump's apportionment order. The Census Bureau also faced difficulties stemming from wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast.
There's still a chance the Senate could quell some concerns by agreeing with the House on an extension for turning over the population numbers. As the coronavirus was spreading in the spring, the Census Bureau asked Congress for an extension until the end of April 2021. The House complied, but the legislation went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate after Trump issued his apportionment order in July.
It's not out of the question that the Senate still could pass an extension, if either the Supreme Court rejects Trump's plan or Democrats take control of the Senate after two runoff elections in Georgia in January.
One thing seems likely: The current court case won't be the last legal fight over the 2020 census. Final apportionment numbers have been litigated frequently in past decades.
“What would a census be without a lot of litigation?” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional aide who specializes in census issues.
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