Judges block Trump order to exclude undocumented immigrants from census count

2020 census documents. — (Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A panel of three federal judges on Thursday evening blocked President Trump's July order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count that is used to allocate seats in Congress.

The panel wrote that this violates federal law, which says apportionment has to be based on everyone who resides in the United States, and the order would cause harm lasting a decade, The Washington Post reports.

Earlier in the day, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered the government to turn over internal documents related to its decision to end the 2020 census count a month earlier than planned. Koh said the Trump administration needs to provide all documents and communications from mid-April, when the Census Bureau said the count would be extended to Oct. 31 because of the coronavirus pandemic, to Aug. 3, when it was announced the count would now end on Sept. 30.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.