Case Summary

On July 24, 2020, the New York Immigration Coalition and other civil rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit against then-President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Secretary of Commerce, and the U.S. Census Bureau and its Director challenging then-President Trump’s “Memorandum on Excluding Illegal Aliens from the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census” as unconstitutional and unlawful. Plaintiffs argued that the U.S. Constitution and federal Census-related statutes require all persons to be included in official state population counts regardless of their citizenship status and that the President’s memorandum was motivated by discriminatory intent in violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. They requested a judicial declaration that the memorandum was unlawful, an injunction barring the defendants from implementing its directives, and mandamus relief requiring the Census Bureau to include undocumented residents in official state population totals.

  • On August 4, 2020, the district court consolidated this case with another challenge to President Trump’s census memorandum, New York v. Trump.
  • On September 10, 2020, the district court declared the presidential memorandum unlawful for violating federal Census-related statutes and permanently enjoined its directives from being implemented. Defendants filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on September 16, 2020, and filed another notice of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on September 18, 2020.
  • On October 16, 2020, the Second Circuit granted the defendants’ motion to hold their appeal in abeyance after SCOTUS granted certiorari in the consolidated case, Trump v. New York.
  • On December 18, 2020, SCOTUS issued a per curiam opinion vacating the district court’s judgment and remanding the case with instructions to dismiss on two different grounds: the plaintiffs’ lack of standing and the ripeness of their claims. The majority explained there were still fundamental uncertainties as to the feasibility and specific implementation of the President’s memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment base and the court couldn’t decide this case based on the policy itself “in the abstract.” Additionally, the plaintiffs’ claims centered around the Executive Branch’s delivery of its apportionment base report to Congress – which had not yet been created – and without that report, plaintiffs were unable to demonstrate any supposed injury that would’ve resulted from the President’s Memorandum.
  • On January 15, 2021, the district court dismissed the case without prejudice to filing a new lawsuit once the plaintiffs’ claims became ripe for judicial review.
  • On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing the Department of Commerce to calculate state population totals and reapportionment figures based upon the whole number of persons in the state without regard to their immigration status, thereby revoking President Trump's Executive Order 13880 and Presidential Memorandum of July 21, 2020.

Case Library

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - 1:20-cv-05781 [together with 1:20-cv-05770]

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 20-3142

Supreme Court of the United States - 20-366