Supreme Court avoids ruling on Trump plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from congressional apportionment

High court’s decision allows White House to move forward with plan – but it seems unlikely to happen before Inauguration Day

The Supreme Court said a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s exclusionary plans surrounding congressional apportionments was “premature” and declined to issue a final ruling on the issue.

The Trump administration has initiated plans that would effectively exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in population allotments for states seats in the House of Representatives, a move decried by civil rights groups and immigrants rights organisations.

The court's decision on Friday, led by its conservative justices, is not a final ruling on the matter. However, it does allow the Trump administration to pursue the plan for now, though it remained unclear as to whether the White House will receive final numbers from the Census Bureau before the president leaves office next month.

If the president still has not received final census numbers by the time President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Inauguration Day, Mr Trump's plan will be effectively die, because Mr Biden is extremely unlikely to pursue it. It's also possible the Biden administration would take steps to try to reverse decisions made under Mr Trump.

For now, though, the high court said it was too soon to rule on the legality of Mr Trump's plan because it's not yet clear how many people he would seek to exclude and whether the division of House seats would be affected.

The court said in an unsigned opinion: "We express no view on the merits of the constitutional and related statutory claims presented. We hold only that they are not suitable for adjudication at this time." At least five of the court's six conservative justices had to join the opinion to make a majority on the nine-member court.

The three liberal justices dissented, saying the effort to exclude people in the country from the population for divvying up House seats is unlawful.

"I believe this Court should say so," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

It's not clear that Friday's decision will have much practical effect.

Documents leaked to the House committee that oversees the Census Bureau suggested the apportionment numbers won't be ready until after Inauguration Day. The Census Bureau has acknowledged the discovery of data irregularities in recent weeks that put in jeopardy the end-of-year deadline in federal law for transmitting numbers to the president.

No president has tried to do what Mr Trump outlined in a memo in July – remove millions of non-citizens from the once-a-decade head count of the US population that determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, as well as the allocation of some federal funding.

States with large populations of people who are in the country illegally could lose seats in the House under Mr Trump's plan, and the president signalled in his memo that punishing states that "encourage illegal aliens" is one reason he issued it.

By the administration's estimate, California could lose two to three House seats if people living in the country illegally were excluded based on what the administration said are more than 2 million such California residents.

His administration has defended his authority to exclude at least some people living in the country illegally, including perhaps people who are in immigration detention or those who have been ordered to leave the country.

But during arguments last month, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, Mr Trump's top Supreme Court lawyer, would not rule out larger categories of immigrants, including those who have protection from deportation under the DACA programme.

Meanwhile, administration opponents have raised other questions about its conduct of the census.

In a lawsuit in California that originally challenged a shortened head count by the Commerce Department, a coalition of cities, counties and advocacy groups are fighting the Trump administration for documents showing how the Census Bureau is processing the data it collected in only half the time originally planned.

The Democratic-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Reform last week subpoenaed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, for documents over data anomalies found in the numbers that jeopardises the 31 December deadline for turning in the apportionment numbers to the president. The committee's chairwoman,  Representative Carolyn Maloney, accused Mr Ross of withholding documents not only from Congress but the Government Accountability Office, which acts as a watchdog on the agency.

The census case likely is the last of several major cases involving immigrants during Mr Trump's presidency, which has been notable for its hard line on immigrants.

The Associated Press contributed to this report