Court challenge ahead for Trump’s district drawing order

Orlando, Fla. — Civil rights groups on Wednesday gave notice in court of their intent to squelch an effort by President Donald Trump to bar people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the head count when congressional districts are redrawn.

Civil rights groups already challenging an order Trump issued last year directing the U.S. Census Bureau to gather citizenship data from administrative records made a request in federal court to expand their complaint to include the new directive Trump issued Tuesday.

A federal judge in Maryland granted the civil rights groups’ request during a hearing held by telephone Wednesday.

“Just when you thought everything was settled yesterday, a new order comes out that makes things unsettled,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said.

The civil rights groups’ original lawsuit challenged an administrative order that Trump issued last year after the Supreme Court blocked his administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form. Opponents feared a citizenship question would suppress participation by undocumented immigrants and minorities.

Trump’s order last year directed the Census Bureau to gather citizenship data from the administrative records of federal and state agencies. Gathering the citizenship data would give the states the option to design districts using voter-age citizen numbers instead of the total population, Trump said in the order.

The lawsuit filed in Maryland by civil rights groups claimed the citizenship data gathering was motivated by “a racially discriminatory scheme” to reduce the political power of Latinos and increase the representation of non-Latino whites. The administrative data also was often inaccurate, they said.

Attorneys for the U.S. government had asked the judge to dismiss the Maryland lawsuit.

Xinis said Wednesday that she had been inclined to do so because there was no way of knowing whether state legislatures would use the citizenship data when redrawing legislative districts.

But Trump’s newest order “really changes the landscape,” she said.

“The first executive order is tied to the second executive order,” Xinis said. “The second executive order is buttoning up some of the concerns we all had as far as standing.”