The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a challenge from 23 states seeking to overturn a lower court’s ruling that President Trump’s plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from some districts is unconstitutional.
A coalition of Democratic-leaning states, led by Massachusetts, California and New York, argues that states have the right to draw their congressional boundaries based on their results in the U.S. Census, and that the protections for states’ right to be fully self-governing created by the Constitution can’t be overridden to protect the districts’ security.
In their 2012 challenge, California and other states argued that the plan, called the 2012 “redistricting remediation rule,” violated a central tenet of the Constitution that Congress and the states cannot enact laws that harm states’ sovereignty. That claim was rejected by a federal appeals court. The Supreme Court in 2016 refused to intervene in the case.
On Tuesday, in a brief order, the justices said they will consider the appeal.
“This is the time of year when future members of Congress get sworn in,” said Jonathan Adler, a constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University Law School in Cleveland who is not involved in the case. “People who want to ensure that they are both elected and have the representation they need will be encouraged by this win.”
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