Trump v. New York and Republican voter suppression efforts

David Gans flags the case of Trump v. New York currently being argued before the Supreme Court as a real-world test of how serious the SCOTUS conservatives (or rightwing radicals) are about their "originalist" view of Constitutional interpretation.

As he puts it, "Trump v. New York poses a basic test of constitutional fidelity to long settled constitutional principles at the core of our democracy. If Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Supreme Court’s conservative originalists fail this test, it will go a long way to defining the Roberts court going forward."

This case involves the national census and Trump's argument that people "who are not in a lawful immigration status" should not be counted. This is a transparent attempt to reduce Congressional representation for states like New York and California who have large Latino immigrant populations.

Gans explains just how clear and explicit the background of the Constitutional provisions affecting the census and the Congressional history of their passage are on the idea that everyone should be included in the census count.

The SCOTUSblog has a number of articles on the case listed here. Nina Perales in her 11/28/2020 contribution to Symposium: A not-at-all disguised attempt to shift power away from Latino voters explains that - not surprisingly for the Trump-Pence Administration - the parameters for defining who falls outside the Trumpian parameters for being counted. Their approach is directed by what is known as "the apportionment memorandum." which Perales argues is straight-up illegal. :

... the apportionment memorandum excludes individuals who, although lacking the rights of U.S. citizens and authorized immigrants, are undoubtedly “whole persons” living in the United States. In this way, the memorandum raises the specter of the infamous three-fifths rule, under which our Constitution – prior to the 14th Amendment – mandated that enslaved persons be counted as three-fifths of free individuals for the purposes of congressional apportionment, thus increasing the political power of slavery states.

The apportionment memorandum not only illegally excludes immigrants living in the country without authorization from the apportionment count, it uses them as the stalking horses to mask its nakedly political goal – to reduce representation in Congress, and the Electoral College, of all the people living in states with the largest Latino populations.

Draped in the language of immigration enforcement (the apportionment memorandum talks about individuals “who are not in a lawful immigration status” and promoting “respect for the law”), the memorandum singles out California and asserts that its residents should properly lose “two or three” congressional seats. When California loses “two or three” congressional seats, many millions of not undocumented people also lose representation. [my emphasis]

In calling it Trumpian, though, we shouldn't forget that this is part of the larger Republican Party program of voter suppression and discrimination against non-white citizens and resident. In 2020, Trumpism is the Republican Party.

in her Argument Analysis of 11/30/2020 on the SCOTUS oral arguments this week, Amy Howe gives us an insight into some of the arguments being made.