It centered on the validity of a July 2020 executive memorandum from President Donald Trump to the Department of Commerce, which conducts and reports the census.

The memo ordered the Department to report the estimated counts of illegal immigrants in each state, allowing the president to exclude them for purposes of congressional apportionment.

[1] While multiple states vowed to bring the case back to the Supreme Court immediately after the required census results were reported, thereby establishing standing and ripeness, the Trump Administration struggled immensely with implementation (due in part to the Supreme Court case Department of Commerce v. New York).

[4][5] Following the Supreme Court's decision, Trump stated he still planned to use other means to estimate the number of undocumented immigrants as part of the census report.

[8] Analysis by the Pew Research Center based on population trends estimated that at least four states, California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona, could lose a Representative should illegal immigrants be discounted in the census total, while Montana would be set to gain a seat.

The petition asks to challenge the standing of the states and cities to be able to take legal action against the memo, as well as to affirm the administration's interpretation of "persons" in the apportionment clause.

The court observers believed that the Justices were likely not to act quickly to stop the order and may wait for the results to be collected and how that could impact federal representation to judge how to handle the case.

Breyer's dissent stated that the Court should have considered the case to evaluate the Executive Order since it was aimed to discount people from the census count.