Illegal immigrants will be included in the 2020 census count used to determine congressional seats, a federal court ruled in a rebuke to President Trump.
The court ruled on Thursday that President Trump’s directive to exclude U.S. residents living in the country illegally from the specific census count that allocates congressional seats violates federal law, according to CNN.
The court granted a permanent injunction blocking the rule but did not decide if the president’s July memorandum is unconstitutional.
“We declare the Presidential Memorandum to be an unlawful exercise of the authority granted to the President by statute,” the three-judge panel unanimously ruled.
Trump’s memorandum didn’t change who would be counted in the 2020 census but directed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to give him the entire count of the total population and another tally that excludes “aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status,” CNN reported.
Trump’s order came shortly after he sought to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census, but the plan was abandoned after the Supreme Court rejected the notion of enforcing voting protections as good enough reason to pose the question.
Trump later directed the Census Bureau to collect data on citizenship status from other government agencies and meld that data with 2020 census records. The order was met with a number of lawsuits from various states and organizations.
The census, which counts every person residing in the United States, is used to allocate seats in Congress, and states can lose out on a significant amount of funding without an accurate count. Historically, the number of lawmakers serving in the House have shifted as census numbers changed.
Census data can also impact a number of other societal functions such as rural development, healthcare, employment, and education services.
Census information is collected every 10 years, and its participation is required by law. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the extended deadline to fill out the census is Sept. 30.
