How will the court vote on Illegal immigrant Census case?

[jimrtex]

The Constitution is very clear about counting every "person," not just every "citizen," sooooo...

The use of the word "in" is ambiguous.

Is someone who is traveling from London to Mexico City and miss their connecting flight in Atlanta on April 1, they are literally in Georgia, but are they counted?

What about if they are on a tourist visa for a month? Six months? What if they overstay the visa and get a job?

Is an illegal alien who is incarcerated with a hold so that he can be deported when the sentence is completed be counted? What about someone who is detained in an ICE facility?

[jimrtex]

In the California case which had required the NRFU to continue, the court had ruled that the attempt by the Census Bureau to complete the Census by the statutory deadlines was arbitrary and capricious.

The Census Bureau had made its final plans for the Census in December 2018, subject to adjustments.

After COVID-19 they produced the COVID-19 plan which delayed enumeration deadline until October 31, apportionment numbers until the Spring, and redistricting numbers until the Summer on an assumption that Congress would modify the statutory deadlines.

After Congress failed to act the Census Bureau came up with the Replan, which accelerated completion of NRFU, and reduced some of the post-processing in order to meet the statutory deadlines. The district court violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) because it was arbitrary and capricious. The district court enjoined completion of NRFU by September 30 and also completion of other steps by the statutory deadline, and was apparently willing to micro-manage the executive.

The 9th Circuit stayed the part about steps after completion of NRFU, and the SCOTUS stayed everything - apparently agreeing that compliance with statutory deadlines was not arbitrary or capricious. NRFU was ended on October 15, half a month after what the Census Bureau wanted, but half a month before what the plaintiffs wanted.

The California cases at both the district court and 9th Circuit level appear to be dragging on into 2021 - they could well be decided as being moot.

The SCOTUS in the case of whether illegal aliens must be counted could follow the lead of Franklin v Massachusetts which permitted persons who were part of the United States polity but not literally in the United States to be included in the apportionment count on the basis of administrative records rather than an actual enumeration, and even though it did not include all US citizens that it might have.

In the case of illegal aliens who have have been styled as immigrants, even though they have no legal right to establish residency, clearly are not part of the United States polity, and administrative records can identify some if not all such persons.

The SCOTUS could also decide the case is not ripe, and call for a rehearing in a few months.

[jimrtex]

The amicus brief on behalf of Alabama congressmen is interesting because it calls into question the basis of the decision in Wesberry v Sanders. The SCOTUS could have simply followed Reynolds v Sims and declared congressional districting as practiced in the mid-1960's in violation of equal protection. Instead it conjured a principle that since representatives are chosen by the people and apportioned based on the number of people that districts should have as equal population as "practicable", which in turn has enabled more precise gerrymandering in the guise of making population vary by less than +/- 1.

This ignores a clear directive in the Constitution that establishes the class of individuals who choose federal representatives as those individuals who may vote for members of the larger chamber of the state legislature. In modern times, this is citizens over the age of 18 (CVAP).

If one follows Wesberry one would come to the absurd conclusion that slaveholders should have more political power than free men; that those who owned a certain type of property should have more votes.

The SCOTUS should instead have adopted the position of Justice White's concurrence and required equal protection for voters regardless where they lived.

[jimrtex]

Oral arguments for Trump v New York

Trump v New York audio (mp3)

Trump v New York transcript (PDF)