The Trump administration hasn’t backed away from its fight to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 census, according to a new court filing.
The legal documents submitted by the Department of Justice on Friday comprise the latest turn in events as the White House pushes forward with its effort to add the inquiry to the constitutionallymandated decennial survey.
The Commerce Department’s attempts to include the question were initially thwarted last week by the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 ruling delivered by conservative-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts, the court effectively blocked its incorporation by sending a dispute in which 18 states, major cities, and immigrant rights groups are arguing the query would depress participation in the questionnaire back to the lower court for further proceedings.
In his opinion, Roberts described the government’s rationale — enforcing voting rights — as “contrived.” Roberts’ findings followed the discovery of hard drives belonging to GOP redistricting expert Thomas Hofeller that contained files indicating he “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question” to the census to give “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites” an electoral advantage.
The Department of Justice told a federal judge in Maryland on Friday (one of three federal judges considering a census-related case) the Trump administration was still formulating a rationale, meeting a 2 p.m. deadline imposed by Judge George Hazel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for the administration to specify whether it wanted to continue taking legal action.
“The Departments of Justice and Commerce have been asked to reevaluate all available options following the Supreme Court’s decision,” government lawyers wrote in the filing. “Any new decision by the Department of Commerce on remand providing a new rationale for reinstating a citizenship question on the census will constitute a new final agency action and Plaintiffs will be fully entitled to challenge that decision at the time.”
The filing follows Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and DOJ attorney Kate Bailey saying this week that Census forms would be printed without the citizenship inquiry, a process that will continue despite Friday’s submissions. President Trump, however, contradicted Ross and Bailey tweeting, “The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!”
“We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question,” Trump wrote.
The president then told reporters Friday he was mulling an executive order that would require the query’s inclusion.
“We’re thinking about doing that. It’s one of the ways — we have four or five ways we can do it. It’s one of the ways that we’re thinking about doing it very seriously,” Trump said. “We can also add an addition on. So we can start the printing now and maybe do an addendum after we get a positive decision.”
Census data is used to allocate congressional representation and federal funds. Ross announced his intention to add the citizenship question in March 2018, the first time it would be included since 1950. Census Bureau studies cited in court filings suggest asking about citizenship could cause about 6.5 million people not to respond to the survey, affecting communities with large immigrant populations.
