Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-366_7647.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) 

9 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

decennial census by the President to Congress . . . the Gen-
eral Assembly shall, not later than June 30, 2021, reappor-
tion and redistrict the State . . . for the general election of 
2022”).  It is of course possible that the Bureau will be una-
ble to find a significant number of matches between the mil-
lions of records it has and the census data it is producing in
time for the President to exclude them from his tabulation 
submitted to Congress.  But even if the Secretary were to
limit  severely  his  compliance  with  the  President’s  memo-
randum—say, by choosing to “report” only those 50,000 al-
iens that are estimated to be in ICE detention centers and 
omitting them from his census “tabulation”—that omission
alone presents a “substantial risk” of affecting the census 
calculation  for  purposes  of  apportionment  and  funding. 
That is the very kind of injury of which plaintiffs complain.
Taken together, these considerations demonstrate that now 
is the appropriate time to resolve this case.  Cf. Abbott La-
boratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 149 (1967) (HARLAN, 
J. for the Court) (explaining that the timing of judicial re-
view turns on “the fitness of the issues for judicial decision 
and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consid-
eration”).

To  repeat,  the  President’s  stated  goal  is  to  reduce  the 
number of Representatives apportioned to the States that 
are  home  to  a  disproportionate  number  of  aliens  without 
lawful status.  The Government has confirmed that it can 
identify  millions  of  these  people  through  administrative 
records.  But if the Census Bureau fails to fulfill its man-
date to exclude aliens without lawful status and reduce the 
number of Representatives to which certain States are en-
titled,  it  will  be  for  reasons  not  in  the  record.    Where,  as 
here,  the  Government  acknowledges  it  is  working  to 
achieve an allegedly illegal goal, this Court should not de-
cline  to  resolve  the  case  simply  because  the  Government
speculates that it might not fully succeed.