WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2020) The US House of Representatives will challenge President Donald Trump's attempt to exclude non-US citizens from the 2020 US census as a violation of the US Constitution, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a press release on Tuesday.
"The Census is a pillar of our democracy, enshrined by our Founders to ensure that all people who live in the United States, regardless of citizenship, are equally counted and represented.�Yet, by seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 Census, the President is violating the Constitution and the rule of law," Pelosi said.
An executive order issued by Trump earlier on Tuesday would require census counts to be adjusted by subtracting undocumented immigrants - presumably using statistical estimates since the US Supreme Court recently forced the Census Bureau to remove a citizenship question from printed census forms.
Pelosi cited language in the Constitution requiring an "actual Enumeration" of the "whole numbers of persons" as opposed to the number of US citizens for the population count, which is used to set congressional districts for Congress.
The speaker did not indicate how the challenge would proceed. However, the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully won a Supreme Court ruling to strip a citizenship question from the census forms, said earlier that its lawyers planned to challenge the executive order in court.
The court based its earlier ruling on the planned citizenship question on technical grounds that did not address the constitutional issue.
