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NEW: As expected, the Supreme Court has overturned lower court rulings out of California & Maryland that had blocked Trump's census apportionment memo. The liberal justices dissent, as they did for the SCOTUS ruling in the NY-based case earlier this month:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/122820zr_3204.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/122820zr_3204.pdf
2. What this means is that the Supreme Court has further cleared the path for President Trump to try to exclude unauthorized immigrants from census numbers that the Constitution says must include the "whole number of persons in each state." But time is running out...
3. Trump can try to alter the census numbers used for reallocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes only *if* he gets control of those numbers before his term ends on Jan. 20, and right now, that is still a big if because...
4. ...we still don't know if/when the Census Bureau can produce state population counts from the 2020 census & a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants by Jan. 20. The bureau's schedule has been set back by irregularities in census records that require more time to fix.
5. Those state population counts are legally due to the president this Thursday, Dec. 31, the 1st step in a handoff process for apportionment numbers that the House clerk certifies.) But for months, the Census Bureau's been on track to miss that deadline: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/05/943416487/millions-of-census-records-may-be-flawed-jeopardizing-trumps-bid-to-alter-count
6. That means the process for reapportioning congressional seats may end up taking place during the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has condemned Trump's plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from apportionment counts and said "in America, everyone counts."
7. I'll be watching this closely through Jan. 20 -- and so are the 23 states, plus immigrant rights organizations and other groups, that initially sued the Trump administration and are preparing to sue again if Trump tries to alter these census numbers before leaving office.
8. And at this point, you may be wondering... https://www.npr.org/2020/11/12/933924447/can-president-elect-biden-redo-the-2020-census-its-complicated
9. To be clear, the Supreme Court is overturning the lower court rulings that had blocked Trump's census memo because SCOTUS found that the cases are not ready for courts to review. From the majority opinion in the New York-based case:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-366_7647.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-366_7647.pdf
