By Paul DeMarco, former Alabama State Representative
This past week, the United States Supreme Court released an opinion that does not bode well for Alabama.
The Court found that the Trump Administration did not provide sufficient justification to require a question regarding citizenship on the next United States Census Questionnaire. The Commerce Secretary had argued that the question is necessary to assist the Justice Department in enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
The Court left open the door to get another shot to argue their case but for now, they are precluded from addressing this issue.
For those states with an increased population due to the illegals, they could increase their representation in Washington DC. For Alabama, that will ultimately mean the state could lose a Congressional seat during the next redistricting after the 2020 census. Alabama’s population has only slightly increased, which means the state could lose a representative to those states with large amounts of illegal aliens. Thus, Alabama could go from seven to six congressmen.
The printing process for the census documents was supposed to start the first of July. However, President Trump has said he is going to work to delay the census until this issue is resolved. He wants to give the Court another opportunity to address this issue and ultimately allow the citizenship question on the census documents.
For Alabama’s sake, we should hope President Trump is successful, or Alabama could lose not only a Congressional seat but both another seat in the electoral college and millions of dollars in federal grants and funding.