Steve Marshall

Opinion contributor

A federal judge, a bevy of private plaintiffs and congressional Democrats are claiming that the once-uncontroversial citizenship question is being revived to suppress noncitizens from participating in the census.

While this debate rages on, the state of Alabama is fighting to bring awareness to a separate, but significant, census-related issue. Alabama is set to lose one of its seven congressional seats and one of its nine electoral votes — a seat and vote it would not lose if illegal immigrants were excluded from the apportionment base.

Though our lawsuit is unrelated to the citizenship question, states like California, which is challenging the question, are the very ones that benefit from the presence of illegal immigrants when it comes to apportionment.

The practice of including illegal immigrants in the census has repeatedly resulted in the unlawful distribution of additional House seats and electoral votes to states with high numbers of illegal immigrants from states with low numbers of illegal immigrants, depriving those states and their citizens of their rightful share of representation and political power.

OUR VIEW:Census citizenship question holds the answer for GOP gerrymandering

The irony, of course, is that illegal immigrants cannot vote; therefore, they are not the ones who gain from being included in the apportionment base. In states in which a large share of the population cannot vote, those who do vote count more than those who live in states where a larger share of the population is made up of U.S. citizens.

By counting illegal immigrants, power will be appropriated from some Americans and given to others — those who live in states with large illegal immigrant populations — compromising the right to equal representation.

Alabama has a constitutional entitlement to representation in both the U.S. House and the Electoral College — a right that is integral to the state’s power within the federal system. Alabama also has a sovereign interest in preventing its citizens from being deprived of their 14th Amendment right to equal representation.

Steve Marshall is the attorney general of Alabama.

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