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It took hours for the Trump administration to be sued over the citizenship question it plans for the 2020 census—and that was just the beginning. California and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee were first out of the gate, but they’ve been followed by a massive multi-state lawsuit:
The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said he was leading a multistate lawsuit to stop the move, and officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington said they would join the effort. The State of California filed a separate lawsuit late Monday night.
“The census is supposed to count everyone,” said Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts. “This is a blatant and illegal attempt by the Trump administration to undermine that goal, which will result in an undercount of the population and threaten federal funding for our state and cities.”
The White House position on the citizenship question is, naturally, to lie about the question’s history:
Ms. Sanders also said the citizenship question had “been included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010, when it was removed.”
In fact, various citizenship questions have appeared in many censuses since 1850, especially during periods of high immigration. But it was dropped from the 1960 general census (there was no census in 1965) and relegated in 1970 to a longer list of questions that were asked of a small minority of residents. After 2000, the question was asked only on the American Community Survey, a separate voluntary poll of a fraction of the population that is conducted more frequently than the census.
The question was added at the last minute after the Trump campaign raised money off the issue, and experts say it will depress participation even by some legal immigrants, leading to an undercount of the populations of immigrant-heavy states—which just happen often to be Democrat-heavy states. Republicans really do have plans A, B, C, and D for voter suppression and skewing the electoral college toward themselves.