NRF Calls on Federal Court to Reject Conservative Legal Effort to Force Mid-Decade Census Count

For Immediate Release
October 29, 2025
Contact
Madia Coleman
comms@redistrictingfoundation.org

Washington, D.C. – The Alliance for Retired Americans and Florida college students supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) have filed a motion in the U.S. District Court Middle District of Florida Tampa Division to intervene in a federal lawsuit in order to protect the 2020 Census count. You can read the full Motion to Intervene here.

The NRF-supported intervenors filed a motion to intervene in University of South Florida College Republicans v. Lutnick, a federal case brought by University of South Florida College Republicans and the Pinellas County Young Republicans seeking to overturn the 2020 Census count, which was conducted during President Trump’s first term in office. 

In the motion, the intervenors point out that two federal elections have already taken place on maps drawn using 2020 Census data. The Intervenors also note that while the plaintiffs are challenging two statistical methods, one of those methods does not affect the data used for apportionment in the first place. 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. 

Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF, issued the following statement on the motion to intervene: 

“The college Republicans’ nonsensical arguments are a backdoor attempt to undermine confidence in nonpartisan census data in order to ultimately conduct an unnecessary and patently inappropriate mid-decade census. Notably, President Trump did not begin to attack the methods of the 2020 Census count—conducted by his own administration—until he initiated a nationwide gerrymandering crisis to attempt to steal the 2026 midterms. Any court should see the absolutely absurd nature of this lawsuit and reject the arguments of the plaintiffs in this case out of hand.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: 

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. 

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