Louisiana, Ohio, Kansas and West Virginia are suing over illegal immigrants in the census
The attorneys general of Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio and West Virginia are suing to prevent the U.S. Census Bureau from including illegal immigrants in the count used to distribute congressional seats and electoral votes.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Louisiana on Sunday — the day before President Donald Trump took office — alleges that the Biden administration chose to include illegal immigrants enumerated in the 2020 census as part of the census to distribute congressional seats and electoral votes. This allegedly resulted Ohio and West Virginia each loses a congressional seat and an electoral vote to other states with larger populations of illegal immigrants and temporary visa holders living there.
The lawsuit states that Texas gained one congressional seat and one electoral vote, while California retained a congressional seat and electoral vote “that it would have otherwise lost.”
State attorneys general argue that Louisiana and Kansas will likely lose a seat in Congress and an electoral vote in the 2030 redistricting if the practice continues.
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“We should not lose representation in Congress because of presence illegal aliens sanctuary in other states,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. “Counting illegal aliens in the census to determine congressional seats and electoral votes is illegal. We sued to stop it.”
Migrants wait for their CBP One appointments before crossing the El Chaparral border port in Tijuana, Mexico, January 20, 2025. The Trump administration is shutting down the CBP One app. (Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In February 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau developed criteria for the 2020 Census, called the “Residency Rule,” stating that foreign nationals living in the U.S. are counted in the census and assigned to the state in which their ” habitual residence”. The lawsuit alleges that this was regardless of whether those foreign nationals are lawfully present in the US and “regardless of whether the visa they hold is temporary.”
After the 2020 Census, the lawsuit says President Biden’s former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, as well as the Census Bureau and its director, Robert Santos, decided to include “illegal aliens and aliens holding temporary visas (`immigrant aliens’) in the census figures is used to determine the distribution of the House of Representatives and the electoral college of votes.”
The suit alleges that the Residence Rule violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s principle of equal representation by “depriving the people of the plaintiff state of their rightful share of political representation, while systematically redistributing political power to states with large numbers of illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens,” also as Article II, section 1, of the United States Constitution by “requiring an unconstitutional apportionment of Electoral College votes among the states.”
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“The residency rule also violates the federal government’s constitutional obligation to conduct an ‘actual enumeration’ of the number of ‘persons in each state,'” the lawsuit states. State and foreigners with permanent residence who were legally admitted to the political body established by the Constitution.”
It continued: “Aliens who are illegally or temporarily present in the United States were ineligible because they lack the right to political representation. It has long been known that foreign diplomats in the U.S. temporarily were also ineligible.”
“But, in any event, the Fourteenth Amendment specifically requires that disenfranchised illegal aliens be excluded from state apportionment,” the lawsuit states. “Therefore, the actual state census cannot include such aliens. Only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (“LPRs,” also known as “green card holders”) can be included.”
People wait for their CBP One appointments before crossing the El Chaparral border port in Tijuana, Mexico, January 20, 2025. The Trump administration has shut down the CBP One application for migrants. (Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Attorneys General argue that illegal immigration “affects the distribution of seats in the House of Representatives and Elective course because the illegal foreign population is both large and highly concentrated in a minority of countries.”
The lawsuit goes on to summarize research that suggests there are about 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., stating that over the past three decades, the United States has “experienced the largest wave of immigration in American history.”
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“Counting illegal aliens in the census takes voting power away from some Americans and gives it to others,” the lawsuit said.
President Trump promised mass deportations and declared a state of emergency on the southern border on his first day in office. It is not clear how the lawsuit will affect the future Trump administration.
