President Donald Trump’s attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from census figures that will be used to determine congressional apportionment has been challenged in federal court — the first of what experts believe could be many legal battles for the administration’s order.
The watchdog group Common Cause, along with the cities of Atlanta and Paterson, New Jersey, and other plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit Thursday in District of Columbia federal court, arguing that Trump’s effort “flouts the plain language of the constitution” and tries to do with a memorandum what should take a constitutional amendment. Other groups have also said they plan to challenge Trump’s memo, which he issued Tuesday.
“The President is not free to substitute his own personal judgment for those that have already been made by the Congress that enacted [apportionment law] and by the framers and ratifiers of [the constitution] and the Fourteenth Amendment,” the lawsuit said. Continue reading.