Cite as: 525 U. S. 316 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
U. S. 924 (1998). We now affirm the judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and we dismiss the appeal from the District Court for the District of Columbia.
I
A
Article I, § 2, cl. 3, of the United States Constitution states that "Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States . . . according to their respective Numbers." It further requires that "[t]he actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." Ibid. Finally, § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
Pursuant to this constitutional authority to direct the manner in which the "actual Enumeration" of the population shall be made, Congress enacted the Census Act (hereinafter Census Act or Act), 13 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., delegating to the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) authority to conduct the decennial census. § 4. The Act provides that the Secretary "shall, in the year 1980 and every 10 years thereafter, take a decennial census of population as of the first day of April of such year." § 141(a). It further requires that "[t]he tabulation of total population by States . . . as required for the apportionment of Representatives in Congress among the several States shall be completed within 9 months after the census date and reported by the Secretary to the President of the United States." § 141(b). Using this information, the President must then "transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State . . . and the number of Representatives to which each State
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