High court to weigh whether census can include those in the country illegally.

It involves bid to exclude noncitizens from population count

WASHINGTON — 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.

The administration’s top lawyers are hoping the justices on a court that includes three Trump appointees will embrace the idea, rejected repeatedly by lower courts. Arguments will take place on Monday by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Even as the justices weigh a bid to remove, for the first time, millions of noncitizens from the population count that determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives as well as the allocation of some federal funding, experts say other issues loom large for the 2020 census as it heads into uncharted territory over deadlines, data quality and politics.

A host of novel questions outside of the court’s eventual decision could determine the final product of the nation’s once-a-decade head count, including whether the incoming Biden administration would do anything to try to reverse decisions made under Trump.

Federal courts in California, Maryland and New York have ruled that Trump’s plan violates federal law or the Constitution, which provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” A fourth court, in Washington, D.C., held this past week that a similar challenge to the administration plan was premature, an argument that also has been made to the high court.

The administration argues that both the Constitution and federal law allow the president to exclude “illegal aliens” from the apportionment count.

“As history, precedent, and structure indicate, the President need not treat all illegal aliens as ‘inhabitants’ of the States and thereby allow their defiance of federal law to distort the allocation of the people’s Representatives,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote.

By the administration’s estimate, California could lose two to three House seats if people living in the country illegally were excluded based on what the administration said are more than 2 million such California residents.