The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in the suit by a group of Democratic attorneys general to stop the plan of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to include a question about citizenship status on the upcoming 2020 decennial census.

It’s possible that the Democrats (joined by the editorial pages of the New York Times and Washington Post) are right, in some ways. It’s possible that noncitizens will, even if they are legal residents of the country, fear that answering the question will invite legal action against them. (It shouldn’t.) And they are right that the total count of residents, as required by the Constitution, will affect how many members of Congress each state will have and how congressional districts are drawn. And it’s certainly possible that the Trump administration’s motives in the matter are, in fact, political.