A three-judge panel has ruled that the order President Trump signed in July barring the inclusion of undocumented residents in the population counts used to redistricting is illegal, dealing another blow to Trump attempts to manipulate population data, the Associated Press reports.
The panel determined that Trump’s order requiring two sets of numbers to be calculated–one with the actual population and one subtracting undocumented residents–violated the purpose of the decadal Census, a count of the population mandated by the Constitution.
“Throughout the Nation’s history, the figures used to determine the apportionment of Congress — in the language of the current statutes, the ‘total population’ and the ‘whole number of persons’ in each State — have included every person residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether citizen or non-citizen and whether living here with legal status or without,” the judges wrote.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of state and city governments, immigrants rights groups and civil libertarians who characterized Trump’s order as the Administration’s attempt to intentionally undercount residents for political purposes.