Supreme Court Punts Census Case, Giving Trump An Iffy Chance To Alter Numbers

The U.S. Supreme Court ducked a direct ruling Friday on whether President Trump can exclude undocumented immigrants from a key census count.

At issue in the case was Trump's July memorandum ordering the U.S. Census Bureau for the first time to exclude undocumented immigrants from the decennial census for purposes of reapportionment. The count is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

In an unsigned opinion, the court said it would be "premature" to rule on the case right now because it is "riddled with contingencies and speculation" and even the Trump administration doesn't know how many undocumented immigrants there are or where they live.

In fact, at oral arguments just 18 days ago, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, representing the Trump administration, told the justices that "career officials at the Census Bureau still don't know even roughly how many illegal aliens it'll be able to identify, let alone how their number and geographic concentration might affect apportionment."