SPLC fights to keep noncitizens in census count for Congress
Four red states want to strip immigrant communities from the 2030 count
The SPLC filed its motion to intervene on behalf of three League of Women Voters chapters: the national organization, plus the Florida and New York state chapters. SPLC senior supervising attorney Avner Shapiro called the case a fight over who has a voice in America, arguing that the Constitution is clear that representation must be based on the whole number of persons regardless of immigration status.
Key Concepts
Essential concepts and terms to understand this topic
Apportionment
The constitutional process of dividing 435 House seats among states based on Census population counts.
Census
The official count of everyone living in the United States, conducted every 10 years.
Fourteenth Amendment
Ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, this amendment grants citizenship to all persons born in the U.S., guarantees equa...
Key People
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Avner Shapiro
Senior supervising attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center
Shapiro filed the motion to intervene in Louisiana v. Commerce on behalf of the League of Women Voters. He argued that the Constitution requires representation based on the whole number of persons regardless of immigration status, and that excluding noncitizens would strip states with large immigrant populations of congressional seats and federal funding.
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Liz Murrill
Attorney General of Louisiana
Murrill led the filing of the original lawsuit on January 17, 2025, in the Western District of Louisiana. She argues that counting undocumented immigrants in the census gives states with larger immigrant populations unfair advantages in congressional representation and Electoral College votes.
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Kris Kobach
Attorney General of Kansas
Kobach partnered with Murrill on the lawsuit, arguing Kansas will likely lose a congressional seat in 2030 if noncitizens continue to be counted. Kobach has long advocated for citizenship-based apportionment and pushed for citizenship questions on federal surveys.
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Howard Lutnick
U.S. Commerce Secretary
Lutnick oversees the Census Bureau as Commerce Secretary. During his confirmation hearing, he acknowledged the 14th Amendment requires counting whole persons. But his department is testing a citizenship question for the 2030 census and requested the case be stayed in March 2025 to review the administration's position.
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George Cook
Acting Director, U.S. Census Bureau
Cook was installed as acting Census Bureau director in September 2025 after career director Robert Santos resigned. Cook previously worked as a Commerce Department chief of staff with a background in institutional investing. He now leads 2030 census planning amid political pressure over who gets counted.
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Robert Santos
Former Director, U.S. Census Bureau (resigned February 2025)
Santos resigned on February 14, 2025, midway through his five-year term, during critical 2030 census planning. He was the first Latino to lead the Census Bureau. His departure left the bureau's leadership in the hands of Trump-appointed officials during a politically charged period for census policy.
Claims & Perspectives
False
False
The Constitution requires counting only citizens for congressional apportionment.
The 14th Amendment says representatives shall be apportioned by counting the whole number of persons in each state. The word citizens does not appear in the apportionment clause. Since the amendment was ratified in 1868, every census has counted all residents regardless of citizenship. Even Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged during his confirmation hearing that the 14th Amendment requires counting each whole person [1][2].
False
Adding a citizenship question to the census would not affect response rates or accuracy.
The Census Bureau's own research found that adding a citizenship question would depress response rates, especially in immigrant communities. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's first attempt to add the question, finding the stated rationale was pretextual. Census experts and former bureau staff have warned that the question could seriously harm the accuracy of the 2030 count [1][2].
False
The census only matters for congressional seats and does not affect everyday life.
Census data drives the distribution of roughly $1.5 trillion in federal funds every year across more than 300 programs that directly affect daily life. Medicaid health coverage, SNAP food benefits, Title I school funding, Head Start preschool, and the National School Lunch Program all use census data to distribute money. An undercount of just 4% could misallocate $60 to $80 billion over a decade. In 2021 alone, census data guided the distribution of $2.8 trillion across 353 federal programs [1][2].
Disputed
Disputed
Counting noncitizens in the census gives states like California and Texas unfair extra congressional seats.
Research shows that including or excluding undocumented residents would shift a small number of House seats between states. But the 14th Amendment does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens for apportionment. States with large immigrant populations also have large citizen populations who benefit from that representation. The framing of extra or unfair seats assumes citizens-only counting is the constitutional baseline, when the opposite is true [1][2].
Misleading
Misleading
The 2020 census was rigged to overcount blue states and undercount red states.
The 2020 census did have errors that affected both red and blue states. Florida was undercounted and missed two House seats, while Minnesota was overcounted and kept a seat it should not have. But calling this rigged implies intentional manipulation. The Census Bureau's Post-Enumeration Survey identified these errors as statistical inaccuracies from a difficult count during COVID-19, not deliberate overcounting of any political group [1][2].
What you can do
Contact your members of Congress about census funding and independence
civic action
Congress controls the Census Bureau's budget and can pass laws protecting census methodology. Your senators and representative can push for full census funding and oppose efforts to exclude noncitizens from the count.
Participate in census outreach and complete-count committees
civic engagement
Local governments and community organizations form Complete Count Committees to make sure everyone gets counted. You can volunteer to help hard-to-count communities participate in the 2030 census, especially communities that were undercounted in 2020.
Track the Louisiana v. Commerce case through court watchers
information
Organizations like Democracy Docket, the Brennan Center, and the Redistricting Data Hub track census litigation in real time. Following this case helps you understand how census policy decisions affect your community's representation and funding.