Thursday morning, the Supreme Court declined to decide if the U.S. census may ask respondents if they are U.S. citizens. The high court has temporarily sent the matter to lower courts for further consideration.
This punt by the Supreme Court is a short-term win for the Democrats. According to Fox News, the 2020 census ballots need to be printed “in a week or so,” so the citizenship question will probably not be on the 2020 census. This has a significant effect on the number of people who will be counted in California. Many illegal immigrants, it is believed, may not answer the census if they need to indicate their citizenship status. According to 2019 Pew Research data, California is home to 2.2 million of the country’s 10.7 million illegal immigrants, far more than any other state.
