On Wednesday, a federal judge in California issued a ruling that blocked the Trump administration from adding a question regarding citizenship status to the 2020 census, which Republicans have sought as a way to weaponize the census to undermine the political clout of Democrats and communities of color.
This ruling, from U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in California, comes after another federal judge in New York blocked the citizenship question in January in a separate case, which is already headed to an appeal before the Supreme Court in April. Seeborg’s decision could have an even greater impact, though, as he deemed the administration's actions unconstitutional in addition to a violation of federal law.
Seeborg found that the Trump administration had violated the Constitution's Enumeration Clause, which requires the federal government to count every single person in the U.S. every 10 years, holding that "including the citizenship question on the 2020 Census is fundamentally counterproductive to the goal of obtaining accurate citizenship data about the public.” He further determined that the question would depress response rates among immigrants and noncitizens, threatening the accuracy of the count.
Both this ruling and the previous one focused on the deceptive nature of the administration's stated reason for adding the question. In testimony before Congress, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had claimed that the Justice Department had requested the addition of the question to help enforce the Voting Rights Act. However, documents later emerged proving that Ross’s explanation was a pretext to hide his real motives, since he had in fact approached the Justice Department, not the other way around.
While the decision in New York focused on the administration’s violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, it did not rule on any constitutional issues. Consequently, even if the Supreme Court overturns that ruling, this second case could provide further grounds to block the citizenship question in the event of an all but certain appeal.
