(NEWSnet/AP) – Some Republicans are pushing to require a citizenship question on the U.S. Census, with the intent to exclude people who aren’t citizens from population numbers used to allocate Congressional seats.

The GOP-led House on Wednesday passed HR 7109, the Equal Representation Act, a bill that would eliminate noncitizens from the tally gathered during a census and used to decide how many House seats and Electoral College votes each state gets.

The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The White House opposes it.

And there are legal questions because the Constitution says all people should be counted during the apportionment process.

But the proposal is getting attention among redistricting experts, civil rights groups and lawmakers as it could dramatically alter the dynamics of the census.

Although the idea has come up before, such a plan has never gotten this far in the legislative process, said Steve Jost, a former Census Bureau official in the Obama and Clinton administrations.

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment requires that congressional seats be distributed among the states “according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” Besides its official purpose of helping to allocate congressional seats and Electoral College votes, census data is used to direct the distribution of around $2.8 trillion in federal money.

The Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form, but was blocked in that effort by the Supreme Court. After that ruling, his administration tried to guess the citizenship status of every U.S. resident through administrative records and sought to exclude people who were in the U.S. illegally from the count used for apportioning congressional seats.

Joe Biden, in one of his first acts as president in January 2021, signed two executive orders revoking those Trump directives.

During a House Rules Committee hearing Monday, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Utah, said including noncitizens in the nation's head count “skews representation away from American citizens” and benefits regions that have large numbers of people who aren’t citizens and would not be allowed to vote anyway.

Knowing how many people who aren’t citizens in the U.S. is “the best way to obtain accurate information,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said at the hearing.

The Biden administration says the GOP bill would increase the cost of conducting the census, make it more difficult to obtain accurate information and violate the 14th Amendment.

“This is really a replay of the fight that Trump started,” said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert. “They have more time, should he win in November, to avoid the mistakes and go through a much more deliberative census planning process.”

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