New evidence in a legal challenge to a citizenship question on the 2020 census reveals the Trump administration hid its recommendation by a political strategist seeking to strengthen the GOP’s political heft in Democratic strongholds, an immigrant rights group said Thursday.
The New York Immigration Coalition, which sued over the matter, wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman that documents show Thomas Hofeller, a former Republican political strategist and redistricting expert, “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question” to give Republicans and non-Hispanic whites an electoral advantage.
The Trump administration concealed Hofeller’s role as well as the reason for the question, the group told Furman.
The findings, which contradict the sworn testimony of at least two top administration officials, including Justice Department official John Gore, come as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of the Commerce Department’s inclusion of the question. It has has been criticized by Democrats as likely to keep some immigrants from participating in the census, thus lowering congressional representation from areas where they live.
The high court heard oral arguments in the case in April, and conservative justices seemed likely at the time to side with the Trump administration.
A lawyer for the New York Immigration Coalition notified the Supreme Court of the new evidence Thursday, and the group is asking Furman to consider sanctions “or other appropriate” relief.
Hofeller died in August, and the information was found on hard drives discovered by his estranged daughter. They indicate that Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study commissioned by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news organization, that adding the citizenship question “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and beneficial to “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
Additionally, the New York Immigration Coalition said the evidence shows Hofeller helped write a draft letter from the Justice Department to the Commerce Department requesting the citizenship question and claiming that including it would ensure better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said the query was sought by the Justice Department. The supporting memo that was ultimately sent to the Commerce Department from the Justice Department in December 2017, however, bore “striking similarities” to the 2015 study by Hofeller and adopted his Voting Rights Act rationale, the coalition said.
“The new evidence demonstrates a direct through-line from Dr. Hofeller’s conclusion that adding a citizenship question would advantage Republicans and non-Hispanic whites to DOJ’s ultimate letter,” the New York Immigration Coalition told Furman. “The new evidence thus not only contradicts testimony in this case, but it shows that those who constructed the Voting Rights Act rationale knew that adding a citizenship question would not benefit Latino voters, but rather would facilitate significantly reducing their political power.”
The Justice Department slammed the findings as “baseless accusations” and will respond in a filing Monday.
“These eleventh-hour allegations by the plaintiffs, including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior Department of Justice official, are false,” a Justice Department spokesperson said. “Before today, Mr. Gore had never heard of the unpublished study apparently obtained from the personal effects of a deceased political consultant.”
The study “played no role in the department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question,” the spokesperson said. “These unfounded allegations are an unfortunate last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case.”
Eighteen states, major cities, and immigrant rights organizations warned adding the citizenship question would cause a population undercount that disproportionately harms communities with large immigrant populations when the Commerce Department announced its decision in March 2018.
Three federal judges, including Furman, subsequently ruled against the Trump administration and blocked the question. Furman said in his decision in January that Ross’s rationale for including the citizenship question wasn’t to enhance the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Act enforcement efforts.
“A court cannot sustain agency action founded on a pretextual or sham justification that conceals the true ‘basis’ for the decision,” Furman wrote.
