On Thursday (Oct. 22) a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) issued a final order and opinion invalidating the president’s July memorandum that ordered census apportionment numbers exclude undocumented immigrants. A copy of the opinion is here.
A federal district court in New York was the first to invalidate the July memorandum in September. That case has been scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on November 30th.
The San Jose court declared the presidential memorandum a “violation of the Apportionment and Enumeration Clauses of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution and Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution; the Census Act; the Reapportionment Act; and the separation of powers.”
On the issue of separation of powers, the district court explained its reasoning as to why it believed the memorandum violates this constitutional principle but clarified that its decision was based wholly on the statutory violations discussed in the opinion.
The court’s reasoning is that the constitution vests Congress with the sole authority for enumeration and apportionment limited only by what congress chooses to delegate to the president via statute. Any decisions outside of the statute’s plain meaning is inconsistent with the separation of powers between the branches of government. In the court’s words:
“All told, the Presidential Memorandum is incompatible with the statutes that govern the process of determining the population for the purpose of apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the states. It seeks to do what Congress has not authorized and what the President does not have the power to do. The Census Act and the Reapportionment Act do not grant the President or the Secretary the authority to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment process.”
City of San Jose, CA et al.v. Trump et al. (No. 20-CV-05169-RRC-LHK-EMC) Oct. 22, 2020
