Trump lawyers ask Supreme Court to add citizenship question to 2020 census
WASHINGTON _ With time running short, Trump administration lawyers urged the Supreme Court on Friday to intervene in a dispute over the 2020 census and uphold their plans to ask everyone about their citizenship.
The move sets the stage for a high-stakes legal fight over the population count, one which could cost California billions in federal funds.
The state filed suit in a federal court in San Francisco seeking to block the citizenship question and cited surveys suggesting that 12 percent to 18 percent of households in California may refuse to respond if they were asked about the citizenship of all the residents.
"The level of fear in minority communities has exploded," said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department. "People are afraid of the federal government."
He said immigrants feared the Trump administration might use the data to detain or deport those here unlawfully.
Two weeks ago, a federal judge in New York ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had violated federal procedural law by ignoring the advice of census experts who said adding a citizenship question would lead to an inaccurate count. It will "materially reduce response rates among immigrant and Hispanic households," the experts said.
Before 1960, the census had asked households about their citizenship and place of birth. Since then, citizenship data have been collected only through surveys of a small segment of the population.
But last March, Ross said he had decided to add a citizenship question to next year's census.
_Los Angeles Times
