The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday for and against the Trump administrations efforts to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census which will be conducted in 2020.
With three lower court judges blocking the citizenship question from being added to the census, Tuesday’s arguments will present the High Court with one of it’s biggest cases of the term.
“The administration’s clear intent was — to strip federal resources and political representation from those needing it most,” said Dale Ho, in charge of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, after a New York court ruled against using the question earlier this year.
“Adding a citizenship question to the census would cause incalculable damage to our democracy. The evidence presented at trial exposed this was the Trump administration’s plan from the get-go. We look forward to defending our trial court victory in the Supreme Court,” said Ho, who will present arguments against the administration.
The controversial question would be included at the request of the DOJ, according to a memo by Wilbur Ross, secretary of the Commerce Department (which oversees the Census Bureau). It would supply block-level data on the citizen and noncitizen voting age population.
The Justice Department claims it needs the information provided by the question in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Critics have said that they suspect the real reason is to help suppress the vote of immigrants and people of color and is just an extension of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
“Make no mistake – immigrants and citizens who have immigrants in their household will be reluctant to participate in a census that asks about citizenship,” one of the dozens of immigrant advocates who have joined the case as plaintiffs, Advancing Justice l AAJC said in a statement.
“The resulting undercount will be devastating to the Asian Pacific American community because as a whole, they are the ‘newest’ Americans, with 92% of the community comprised of individuals who are foreign-born or are the children of immigrants.”
According to the Census’ own analysis, the decision to add a citizenship question would stop “approximately 6.5 additional million people” from participating in the Census. In the New York case, the district court found that, as a result, California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, New York, and Illinois face a “certainly impending” or “substantial risk of losing a seat” in the House of Representatives and that numerous states would “lose funds from several federal programs.”
The ACLU prepared the following the video that explains what’s at stake:
AsAmNews has Asian America in its heart. We’re an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. Check out our Twitter feed and Facebook page for more content. Please consider interning, joining our staff or submitting a story
