ICYMI: Federal Court Grants NRF’s Motion to Dismiss Conservative Legal Effort to Force Mid-Decade Census Count

Washington, D.C. – This week, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida granted a motion to dismiss in University of South Florida College Republicans v. Lutnick, a federal case seeking to overturn the 2020 Census count, which was conducted during President Trump’s first term in office. The motion was filed by a group of intervenor-defendants, supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF). 

“This is a significant victory in the ongoing fight to protect the integrity of the 2020 census count,” said Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF. “The arguments brought in this case were absurd to begin with, and the court’s dismissal should send a clear signal that outrageous backdoor attempts to force an inappropriate mid-decade census will be stopped.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: 

The NRF played a central role in this victory. After joining the case in order to combat far-right attempts to undermine the census, the NRF-supported intervenor-defendants, the Alliance for Retired Americans and two Florida college students, filed a motion to dismiss the case. 

Among their arguments, the NRF-supported intervenor-defendants pointed out that two federal elections have already taken place on maps drawn using 2020 Census data. The intervenor-defendants also noted that while the plaintiffs are challenging two statistical methods, one of those methods does not affect the data used for apportionment. The second one pertains to just 16,500 people in Florida, or 0.07% of the state’s population, and 169,000 people across the United States, or 0.05% of the country’s population—nowhere near enough to affect apportionment. The average population size of congressional districts in the United States following the 2020 Census is 761,169, and in Florida, it is 769,221.

This victory builds on the NRF’s record of success in court combatting legal efforts to undermine the census. During the first Trump Administration, the NRF played a central role in defending against efforts to tamper with the census count, including when the Department of Commerce proposed adding a citizenship question to the census. The NRF directed the litigation on behalf of a group of plaintiffs in Kravitz v. U.S. Department of Commerce. The NRF and other organizations’ efforts eventually led to a crucial decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that blocked the Trump Administration from adding the citizenship question to the 2020 Census. 

In 2020, after President Trump tried again to manipulate apportionment by issuing a memorandum asserting his intention to exclude undocumented people from apportionment, the NRF filed a lawsuit called Useche v. Trump. This case also made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which punted on the issue because of President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.