March 15, 2019
The US Supreme Court will decide whether the 2020 Census can include a question about citizenship that critics fear could discourage many legal and illegal immigrants from participating in the Census.
The citizenship question has been pushed for years by many conservative and Republican groups. Opponents say the question is intended to drive down participation in areas with large numbers of foreign-born residents—areas that also happen to be Democratic strongholds.
The Census is used for two main purposes.
First, its population count is used to determine how many members of the House of Representatives a state is allocated. If fewer people agree to be counted, some states could lose congressmen. The trial court determined that if the question were added, the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas risked losing seats in the House.
Second, the population count in cities, counties and states is used in formulas that distribute $880 billion in federal funds to those jurisdictions. If the Census doesn’t count all their residents, the funds those jurisdictions receive will be reduced.
In January, a district court in New York ordered the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census, to kill the citizenship question. The case would then normally go to a regional circuit court of appeals. But the Supreme Court announced February 15 that it will take the case up directly without waiting for an appeals court ruling. It did that to expedite the conclusion of the case, with both supporters and opponents of the Trump Administration urging that speed-up. The Census Bureau has said it must start printing the Census questionnaires by the end of June. It will distribute one form to each of about 130 million households early in 2020 for responses.
The Constitution requires a census count every 10 years. The first Census was taken in 1790. A question about citizenship had once been common, but it has not been asked of every household since 1950. The question is, however, part of a longer, annual questionnaire called the American Community Survey, which goes to 3.5 million households each year.
The court case stems from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision in 2018 to add the citizenship question, despite the opposition of career officials at the Census Bureau, who said the question would likely drive down Census responses by about 2 percent.
Ross said he was responding to a Justice Department request to ask about citizenship in order to improve enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act. However, the trial unearthed the fact that Ross had told the Justice Department to send him that letter.
US District Judge Jesse Furman in New York ruled in January that the question could not be included, saying that fewer people would respond to the Census and that the process Ross used broke a “veritable smorgasbord” of federal rules on how such decisions must be made.
The administration has defended the addition of the citizenship question by arguing that courts have no business second-guessing the commerce secretary in performing a basic function of his job.
The case is the latest in a series that challenge President Trump’s assertions of presidential power. In one such case, the Supreme Court agreed that Trump could limit visas to people from several Muslim-majority countries. In another, it refused to allow him to ban asylum claims by people who enter the United States illegally.
The latest case focuses on Article One, Section Two of the Constitution, which requires that an “actual enumeration” of the “inhabitants” of the country be taken every 10 years. It is a count of people living in the country, not of citizens.
