The dispute centers on whether the Census Bureau should count certain noncitizens differently as officials plan the 2030 census, a move that could change both apportionment—the allocation of congressional seats and Electoral College votes—and the downstream flow of federal funds tied to census outcomes. Immigrant rights groups, seeking to intervene in the Missouri case, said Hanaway’s lawsuit would force the government to restart the apportionment math based on 2020 numbers, with major cost and representation consequences.
The court filing described the request as unlawful and argued that it would “distort representation for millions of Americans and shake the foundations of our representative democracy,” according to the motion from the immigrant rights groups. The groups said they are seeking to intervene and that they are represented by several ACLU Foundation chapters.
Hanaway’s suit asks the court to require that the apportionment process that used 2020 census figures be redone without counting people who are in the U.S. illegally. The lawsuit also seeks the same type of counting approach for the apportionment process after the 2030 census, according to the complaint described in the reporting.
The legal argument invokes the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which includes language stating that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment. The reporting said the Census Bureau has interpreted that requirement to mean anybody living in the United States, regardless of legal status, should be counted for apportionment purposes.
The Missouri lawsuit is part of a broader push by Republicans to limit the census and redistricting effects of counting noncitizens. The reporting said a similar lawsuit filed by four other Republican state attorneys general is pending in federal court in Louisiana, and that Republican lawmakers in Congress have also introduced legislation aimed at accomplishing the same overall goal.
The cluster also described a related political context: President Donald Trump has been pressuring Republican-led state legislatures to redraw congressional districts to benefit the GOP ahead of the midterm elections. It said that last August, Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants in the U.S. illegally from the head count.
In the federal-court landscape so far, intervenors recently succeeded in getting another lawsuit against the Census Bureau tossed out. A three-judge panel in Tampa dismissed a challenge by Republican groups to the agency’s statistical methods during the 2020 census, according to the reporting.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged that citizenship is not a factor in apportionment under the Constitution. When asked whether a citizenship question would be included, Lutnick said the agency had not determined the questions on the 2030 census form yet, adding: “What the questionnaire is, I don’t know, and we’ve not decided.” The reporting noted that the Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau.
While the immediate case is focused on Missouri’s lawsuit and the effort to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from census counting used for apportionment, the dispute also reflects a larger attempt to shape how representation and federal resources are calculated for the next decade.