Prof. Jill Hasday Quoted by Newsweek About Trump’s Attempt to Change How Census is Conducted

Professor Jill Hasday, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Centennial Professor in Law, was quoted by Newsweek about Donald Trump’s effort to change the way the U.S. Census Bureau collects data, wanting to exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally. Legal experts say excluding undocumented immigrants from the census would violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment — the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states based on population. Prof. Hasday said, “Excluding undocumented immigrants from the United States Census would be unconstitutional. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that seats in the United States House of Representatives ‘shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.’ This means that the United States Census must count ‘the whole number of persons in each State’ so each state receives the correct number of House seats.”