The attorneys general of Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia are suing the U.S. Census Bureau to stop them from counting illegal aliens in the numbers used to divide congressional seats and electoral votes.
The lawsuit filed in Louisiana federal court on Sunday – the day before President Donald Trump took office – alleges that the Biden administration chose to include illegal immigrants counted in the 2020 census as part of the population tally to apportion congressional seats and electoral votes. This caused Ohio and West Virginia to lose one congressional seat and one electoral vote because other states have more people living there without legal immigration status or with short visas.
The lawsuit claims that Texas won one congressional seat and one electoral vote, while California maintained a congressional seat and an electoral vote that it should have lost.
The attorneys general say that if this practice continues, Louisiana and Kansas are likely to lose one congressional seat and one electoral vote in the 2030 reallocation.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill stated, “We shouldn’t lose our representation in Congress because other states are sheltering illegal immigrants.” Counting illegal immigrants in the census to decide how many Congressional seats and electoral votes to have is against the law. We have filed a lawsuit to put a stop to it.
In February 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau created guidelines for the 2020 census called the “Residence Rule.” This rule says that foreign residents living in the U.S. will be counted in the census and placed in the state where they usually live. The lawsuit states that this applies to foreign people in the U.S. whether they are legally here or not and whether their visa is temporary.
After the 2020 census, a lawsuit claims that former President Biden’s Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, along with the Census Bureau and its director, Robert Santos, chose to count “illegal immigrants and nonimmigrant aliens with temporary visas” in the census numbers that are used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives and Electoral College votes.
The lawsuit says the Residence Rule violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal representation principle by “robbing the people of the Plaintiff States of their rightful share of political representation, while systematically redistributing political power to states with high numbers of illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens,” as well as Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution by “necessitating an unconstitutional distribution of Electoral College votes among the states.”
The case claims that the Residence Rule goes against the federal government’s duty to count everyone in each State accurately. The term “persons in each State” was known during the Founding and Reconstruction periods to refer only to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who were allowed to live in the country.
It goes on to say that aliens who are in the United States illegally or for a short time do not qualify because they do not have the right to political representation. It has been known for a long time that foreign officials in the U.S. for a short time do not qualify either.
“But, in any case, the Fourteenth Amendment separately requires that illegal aliens who have been denied the right to vote be excluded from state apportionment,” the lawsuit says. “Therefore, the official count of the population in the states cannot include these foreigners.” Only U.S. citizens and green card holders (lawful permanent residents) can be included.
The attorneys general say that illegal immigration impacts how seats are shared in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College because many illegal immigrants live in just a few states.
The lawsuit mentions studies showing there are around 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. It says that for the past thirty years, the U.S. has experienced the biggest wave of immigration in its history.
The case claims that counting undocumented immigrants in the census reduces voting power for some Americans and increases it for others.
On his first day in office, President Trump promised to remove many people and announced a state of emergency at the southern border. It’s not clear how the lawsuit will affect the new Trump government.
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