NPR, June 27, 2019: Supreme court leaves citizenship question blocked for now from 2020 census
In a defeat for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court leaves the citizenship question blocked for now from the 2020 census, in part because of the government’s explanation for why it added it in the first place.
The majority said it “cannot ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given” by the Trump administration.
The complicated decision comes more than a year after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, overruled the unanimous advice of Census Bureau experts and approved the addition of the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”
The high court’s decision could have profound political consequences. The new population counts from the 2020 census will determine for the next 10 years how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives and how many Electoral College votes each state gets in presidential elections beginning in 2024. They also help determine how some $900 billion a year in federal money is allocated across the country for roads, schools, hospitals, health care and more.
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Census Bureau research has long shown that adding a citizenship question often leads people in households with immigrants — including those who are U.S. citizens — to simply not fill out the census form. That could result in an undercount that is not only substantial but uneven, according to Census Bureau experts, and it hits mainly in urban areas where immigrant groups live, while leaving rural, mainly white areas largely unaffected.
