Eric Holder Calls on Court to Reject Conservative Legal Effort to Undermine the Census

For Immediate Release
January 27, 2025
Contact
Madia Coleman
coleman@redistrictingfoundation.org

Washington, D.C. – Today, a group of voters supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) asked a federal court to join a newly-filed lawsuit in order to protect a fair and accurate census, and in turn, protect their congressional and Electoral College representation. 

The voters, who are from Texas and California, filed a motion to intervene in Louisiana v. U.S. Department of Commerce, a lawsuit brought by Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia that seeks to exclude undocumented residents and residents on temporary visas from the apportionment count. In their motion to intervene, the Texas and California voters point out that the U.S. Constitution is clear that the apportionment of congressional seats must be based upon a census count of all persons—regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. 

“As our country is becoming, inescapably and in so many ways, more diverse—in both red and blue states—anti-democratic forces are doing everything they can to deny all citizens fair representation in order to lock in unearned political power,” said Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States. “What these states are seeking would not just be a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution—which clearly states that apportionment must be made according to a count of all persons—they are also inconsistent with settled practice and the fundamental principles of democratic governance. The court must adhere to a clear mandate in the Constitution and to more than a century of precedent in this critical moment.”

The filing points out that over 150 years ago, the Fourteenth Amendment transformed America by requiring an “actual Enumeration” every 10 years of “the whole number of persons in each State,” abandoning the inhumane practice of counting enslaved persons as three-fifths of a person. The conservative states behind this lawsuit are attempting to depart from the bedrock theory of the Constitution that everyone—every person—should be counted equally for the purpose of congressional apportionment. You can read the full Motion to Intervene here. 

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: 

During the first Trump Administration, the NRF played a central role in defending against similar efforts to tamper with the census count, including when the Department of Commerce under the Trump Administration 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. Dep’t 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 the issue on account of President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. 

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