Reason Roundup

Supreme Court Considers Whether Trump Can Block Immigrants From Census Counts

Plus: Pennsylvania rejects mail-in vote challenge, Facebook begs for regulation, and more...

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sipaphotosten948896 | Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden/Sipa/Newscom
(Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden/Sipa/Newscom)

Fourth time's the charm? Three federal courts have told the Trump administration that it's not OK to exclude undocumented immigrants from U.S. census counts. Today, the issue comes before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court is slated to hear oral arguments Monday in a case called Trump v. New York.

Some background:

In July Trump issued a memorandum ordering the Census Bureau to send him two sets of numbers. The first set was for the whole number of persons in each state. And the second set — for apportionment of the number of seats in each state — was to subtract the number of undocumented immigrants from the total count.

As the memorandum candidly admitted, that might mean that California, for instance, would lose two congressional seats. Trump's stated aim was to "not reward" states where large numbers of undocumented immigrants live….

So far the president has lost his argument in three lower courts, with both Democratic and Republican-appointed judges ruling against him unanimously.

Legal blogger Amy Howe explains the SCOTUS stakes:

If the court upholds the plan and the administration is able to implement it before leaving office, the new method of apportioning House seats could shift political power away from states with large immigrant populations and toward states with fewer immigrants.

The Supreme Court will also consider a case today on federal hacking law.

In Van Buren v. United States, the Court will, for the first time, "weigh in on the wide range of digital conduct that is potentially criminalized under a federal anti-hacking law known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," explains James Romoser at SCOTUSBlog. More on that case here.

ELECTION 2020

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against a Republican challenge to mail-in ballots. "Petitioners sought to invalidate the ballots of the millions of Pennsylvania voters who utilized the mail-in voting procedures," the court noted in its Saturday ruling. "Alternatively, Petitioners advocated the extraordinary proposition that the court disenfranchise all 6.9 million Pennsylvanians who voted in the General Election and instead 'direct the General Assembly to choose Pennsylvania's electors.'"

FREE MINDS

Could correcting the misalignment between who hands out prison sentences and who pays for them bring about better criminal justice outcomes? A new paper suggests yes:

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Reminder:

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