November 6, 2020: Third court blocks Trump’s order on who gets counted to allocate congressional seats

A panel of three judges on Friday became the third federal court to rule that President Trump’s effort to exclude people in the country illegally from the numbers used for dividing up congressional seats is unlawful. The federal court in Maryland prohibited the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, from sending to the president any figures that include the number of people in the country illegally in each state when transmitting the apportionment count at the end of the year. Federal courts in New York and California already have issued similar orders. The Trump administration has appealed the New York case, and the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on it at the end of the month.