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TRUMP v. NEW YORK 

Per Curiam 

Congress  a  “statement  showing  the  whole  number  of  per-
sons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed, as ascer-
tained” under the census.  46 Stat. 26, 2 U. S. C. §2a(a).  In 
that statement, the President must apply a mathematical
formula called the “method of equal proportions” to the pop-
ulation  counts  in  order  to  calculate  the  number  of  House 
seats for each State.  Ibid.; see Department of Commerce v. 
Montana, 503 U. S. 442, 451–452 (1992). 

This  past  July,  the  President  issued  a  memorandum  to
the  Secretary  respecting  the  apportionment  following  the 
2020 census.  The memorandum announced a policy of ex-
cluding “from the apportionment base aliens who are not in 
a lawful immigration status.”  85 Fed. Reg. 44680 (2020).
To facilitate implementation “to the maximum extent feasi-
ble and consistent with the discretion delegated to the ex-
ecutive  branch,”  the  President  ordered  the  Secretary,  in
preparing  his  §141(b)  report,  “to  provide  information  per-
mitting the President, to the extent practicable, to exercise 
the President’s discretion to carry out the policy.”  Ibid.  The 
President  directed  the  Secretary  to  include  such  infor-
mation in addition to a tabulation of population according
to the criteria promulgated by the Census Bureau for count-
ing  each  State’s  residents.  Ibid.;  see  83  Fed.  Reg.  5525 
(2018).

This  case  arises  from  one  of  several  challenges  to  the 
memorandum  brought  by  various  States,  local  govern-
ments, organizations, and individuals.  A three-judge Dis-
trict  Court  held  that  the  plaintiffs,  appellees  here,  had
standing to proceed in federal court because the memoran-
dum was chilling aliens and their families from responding 
to the census, thereby degrading the quality of census data 
used to allocate federal funds and forcing some plaintiffs to
divert  resources  to  combat  the  chilling  effect. 
___ 
F. Supp. 3d  ___,  ___–___,  2020  WL  5422959,  *13–*15 
(SDNY, Sept. 10, 2020) (per curiam).  According to the Dis-
trict Court, the memorandum violates §141(b) by ordering