Court Thwarts Trump's Attempt To Exclude Undocumented Immigrants From Census

A federal court has thwarted an executive order that said undocumented immigrants should not be counted in the 2020 Census. In a Thursday ruling, the court noted that President Donald Trump's July 21 order runs contrary to America's historical method of tallying an area's population—a count that matters for purposes of determining how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that area gets. The judges ordered the secretary of commerce not to enact the order.

"Throughout the Nation's history, the figures used to determine the apportionment of Congress—in the language of the current statutes, the 'total population' and the 'whole number of persons' in each State—have included every person residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether citizen or non-citizen and whether living here with legal status or without," states the decision, penned by a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.