Two federal lawsuits filed by groups aligned with President Donald Trump could shape how the U.S. Census Bureau conducts the 2030 decennial census and who is counted, even as the agency continues planning for the next count.
The lawsuits are being litigated this year and are tied to the census’s constitutional role in congressional representation and to the distribution of federal aid to states, according to the Associated Press. The Census Bureau plans to continue its work while the court challenges move through the legal process, including practice runs in six locations this year.
The first case, filed in Florida, is led by America First Legal, a group co-founded by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff. In the lawsuit, America First Legal challenges methods the Census Bureau has used to protect participants’ privacy and to ensure people in group-living facilities—such as dorms and nursing homes—are counted. The lawsuit seeks to prevent those methods from being used for the 2030 census and to revise 2020 figures, Gene Hamilton, the group’s president, said.
“This case is about stopping illegal methods that undermine equal representation and ensuring the next census complies with the Constitution,” Hamilton said in a statement, as reported by the Associated Press.
In the Florida case, a judge allowed a retirees’ association and two university students to join the defense as intervenors. Justice Department lawyers asked that the case be dismissed.
The second lawsuit was filed in federal court in Louisiana by four Republican state attorneys general and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. That case seeks to exclude people in the United States illegally from being counted in the numbers used for redrawing congressional districts, the Associated Press reported.
Both cases have also drawn intervention efforts by outside groups represented by the Democratic-aligned Elias Law Group, which has sought to intervene over concerns about whether the Justice Department will defend the Census Bureau vigorously. A spokesman for the Elias Law Group, Blake McCarren, warned in an email that allowing the conservative legal group to prevail could have “a needlessly chaotic and disruptive effect upon the electoral process” if all 50 states had to redraw political districts.
In the Louisiana lawsuit, government lawyers said three League of Women Voters chapters and Santa Clara County in California had not shown proof that department attorneys would do anything other than robustly defend the Census Bureau. A judge had not ruled yet on their request to join the case, according to the reporting.
The Associated Press reported that the lawsuits’ goals align with parts of Trump’s agenda, even though the 2030 census will be conducted under a different president because his second term will end in January 2029. During Trump’s first term, the AP said, he tried to prevent people in the U.S. illegally from being used in apportionment numbers and sought to collect citizenship data through administrative records. It also reported that Trump’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The AP said Trump’s orders were rescinded in January 2021 when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House, before the Census Bureau released the 2020 census figures. It also said that in August Trump instructed the U.S. Commerce Department to change how the Census Bureau collects data, aiming to exclude immigrants in the U.S. illegally, while neither White House officials nor Commerce Department officials explained what actions would be taken in response to the president’s social media post.
The lawsuits are also framed against the constitutional requirement in the 14th Amendment that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for apportionment. The AP reported that apportionment numbers also guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal dollars to the states for roads, health care and other programs.
The Associated Press also described the Justice Department’s posture in the Louisiana case, which was filed at the end of the Biden administration and put on hold in March at the request of the Commerce Department. The AP said Justice Department lawyers argued they needed time to consider the position of new leadership in the second Trump administration, and that state attorneys general asked in December that the hold be lifted.
In court filings, the AP reported, Justice Department lawyers opposed lifting the stay, arguing: “At this stage of such preparations, lifting the stay is not appropriate.”