From The Trussville Tribune staff reports
WASHINGTON — U.S. Representative Mo Brooks asked the House Oversight and Reform Committee for equal protection and voting rights for all Americans Thursday.
Brooks (AL-05) testified about the exclusion of illegal aliens in the reapportionment of the Congressional seats portion of the 2020 Census.
Alabama is poised to lose a congressional seat, an electoral college elector, and its fair share of federal monies following the 2020 Census if illegal aliens are included in the 2020 Census reapportionment count that determines how many congressmen and electoral college votes each state has in presidential elections. Brooks’ office said counting illegal aliens for purposes of reapportionment violates the 14th Amendment Equal Protection and “one man, one vote” rights of Alabama and American citizens. Brooks and the State of Alabama have filed litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama that challenges the Census Bureau’s practice of counting illegal aliens for purposes of reapportionment of Congressional seats and electoral college votes.
“The inclusion of the citizenship question on the next census is not only common sense, it is a Constitutional requirement,” Brooks said. “After the 2010 Census, illegal aliens were counted for reapportioning Congressional districts and electoral college votes. Hence, states that had fewer illegal aliens saw a shift of their political power to states that had more illegal aliens. Law-abiding states lost not only Congressional representation in Congress, they also lost electoral college votes that elect the president of the United States. I submit the citizenship power of citizens in low illegal alien count states was diluted as their Congressional seats and electoral college representation was disproportionately cut.
Brooks concluded by pointing out why he believes the practice is unconstitutional.
“The counting of illegal aliens for reapportionment of political power purposes violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by unconstitutionally diluting the representative and political power of citizens who live in low illegal alien population states,” he said. “In that vein, the United States Supreme Court has consistently upheld ‘one man, one vote’ principles that prevent the dilution of a citizen’s voting rights. It is an unconstitutional deprivation of 14th Amendment equal protection rights under ‘one man, one vote’ principles to count illegal aliens for the purposes of reapportionment of Congressional power and electoral college votes because, if illegal aliens are counted in the distribution of Congressional representation and electoral college votes, then some citizens votes are worth more, are more powerful, than votes of other citizens. That is wrong…I urge the House Oversight and Reform committee to appropriately address them by defending the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and long-held ‘one man, one vote’ principles.”