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12 

TRUMP v. NEW YORK 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

otherwise meet the traditional residency requirement when
it wished to do so.  Yet it did not single out aliens without 
lawful status in the 1929 Act. 

Second,  historical  practice  leaves  little  doubt  about  the 
statute’s meaning.  From the founding era until now, enu-
meration  in  the  decennial  census  has  always  been  con-
cerned  with  residency,  not  immigration  status.    The  very
first Act setting forth the decennial census procedure stated
that persons should be counted if they “ ‘usually resid[e] in 
the United States.’ ”  Franklin, 505 U. S., at 804 (citing Act 
of Mar. 1, 1790, ch. 2, §5, 1 Stat. 103).  The 1820 decennial 
census  included  “foreigners  not  nationalized”  among  the 
schedule of whole number of persons to be tabulated within 
each  State.  See  Act  of  March  14,  1820,  3  Stat.  550.    The 
1860  census  included  escaped  slaves  living  in  the  North,
although  those  persons  were  unlawfully  present  at  that
time.  See  San  Jose,  ___  F. Supp.  3d.,  at  ___,  2020  WL 
6253433,  *7  (citing  Record  in  No.  5:20–cv–5167,  ECF  No.
64–22, pp. 5–7 (Decl. of Shannon D. Lankenau)).  The 1920 
census population count included a minor who had been de-
nied  lawful  admission  to  the  United  States,  but  who  was 
nonetheless paroled within the country during World War
I until she could be sent home.  See Record in No. 20–cv– 
5770,  Doc.  149–2,  Exh.  61,  ¶3  (Decl.  of  Jennifer  Mendel-
sohn)  (discussing  the  inclusion  of  the  minor  petitioner  in 
Kaplan v. Tod, 267 U. S. 228 (1925), in the census count). 
All  told,  at  the  time  Congress  wrote  the  1929  Act,  the
United States had conducted more than a dozen decennial 
censuses.  As the Government acknowledged below, none of
them excluded residents solely because of immigration sta-
tus.  Juris. Statement 91a.  Any contemporary understand-
ing of the words “persons in each State” as ascertained un-
der  the  “decennial  census”  would  have  reflected  this 
longstanding and uniform practice.  See McQuiggin v. Per-
kins,  569  U. S.  383,  398,  n.  3  (2013)  (“Congress  legislates
against the backdrop of existing law”).  Taken together, the