Alabama sues Census Bureau for counting undocumented immigrants

Alabama has reportedly filed a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s practice of counting immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status in its official Census Bureau population counts.

The state filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday arguing that the new census numbers for 2020 will result in Alabama losing a congressional seat and a vote in the Electoral College to a state with a bigger “illegal alien population,” according to The Associated Press.

{mosads}The state of Alabama and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) are the plaintiffs in the suit.

Citizens and noncitizens with a residence in the U.S. are included in official census and apportionment counts. 

President Trump’s administration said in March that the 2020 census would include a citizenship question, something that has not appeared on the general form since 1950. Democrats have argued that a citizenship question would lead to inaccurate population counts because it would discourage immigrants from filling out the questionnaire.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross pushed back against those concerns, stating that the necessity for accurate data outweighs “fears about potentially lower response rate.”

Seventeen states have already sued the Trump administration over its intention to include the citizenship question, according to the AP.