Attorney General Becerra Joins Nationwide Coalition to Intervene in Census Challenge

California to Intervene as Defendant in Alabama Census Case to Ensure Electoral College Count Is Not Distorted 

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra today, as part of a 26-member coalition from around the country — including 15 states, the District of Columbia, three counties, six cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors — filed a motion to intervene as a defendant in Alabama v. U.S. Department of Commerce. The 26-member coalition is intervening to oppose the State of Alabama’s attempt to advance a discriminatory agenda and tilt power within Congress and the Electoral College by refusing to count every individual in the 2020 decennial census. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as their respective leaders, have been named as defendants in the case. Attorney General Becerra moved to intervene in the Northern District of Alabama, to ensure the case is properly presented and that every resident of the United States of America — irrespective of citizenship status — is counted in the decennial census.

“The constitution is clear: everyone counts, regardless of citizenship status,” said Attorney General Becerra. “Alabama’s attempt to exclude millions of individuals from the 2020 census is simply another effort by political interests to manipulate what should be a straightforward and nonpartisan process. We have little reason to believe that the Trump Administration will sufficiently defend our Constitution, and our communities have too much to lose.”

Article I of the U.S. Constitution, as amended by the Fourteenth Amendment, is clear that the “actual Enumeration” of the “whole number of persons” in each state includes everyone in the country, regardless of their lawful status. Despite that, in May 2018, the State of Alabama and an Alabama congressman filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s long-standing policy of adhering to the Constitution by counting all individuals, including non-citizens, in the decennial census. The census count is used to distribute billions of dollars in federal funding, as well as determine the number of representatives each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives, which, subsequently, determines the number of Electoral College votes each state receives in a presidential election. Removing noncitizens from the census count would not only result in the loss of representation in Congress for several states with large immigrant populations, but would also reduce representation of cities and counties with large immigrant populations in state legislatures. It could also result in reductions in crucial federal funding — as over 300 programs and billions of dollars are tied, at least in part, to census population figures.

While the United States Department of Justice is defending the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce in this case, recent statements and actions by senior officials in the Trump Administration suggest that the Administration’s defense will be inadequate. On July 11, 2019, while announcing that the federal government would no longer seek to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, U.S. Attorney General William Barr suggested that the Administration would reconsider the issue at the heart of Alabama’s challenge: whether to count undocumented immigrants in the apportionment count.

Joining Attorney General Becerra in filing the motion to intervene are the Attorneys General of New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Additionally, Monterey County in California, Hidalgo and Cameron Counties in Texas, the cities of New York, NY; Central Falls, RI; Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Providence, RI; and Seattle, WA, as well as the bipartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors have joined as defendants in the suit.

A copy of the motion is available here.