Ruling on census question is a rebuke of lying

Michael A. Lindenberger says although Supreme Court’s decision is welcome, it leaves open possibility that citizenship still can be added.

The Supreme Court did a valuable service to the nation Thursday by holding the Trump administration accountable for at least some of the lies it tells.

The case involved the Trump administration’s decision to add to the 2020 Census a question about citizenship. Many voices, including our editorial board, have called that unwise or even malicious, given that it’s likely to discourage noncitizens or those who share housing with noncitizens to be counted.

In its ruling Thursday, the court did not agree with us on that point. In fact, the bulk of Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision for the court upholds the right of Congress and, by extension, the Commerce Department to shape the Census as it sees fit. A citizenship question is perfectly legal, a majority on the court concluded. The administration need only show that its reasons for adding it are reasonable.

But what the law does not permit, Roberts wrote, is the secretary to lie about those reasons.

When challenged on the citizenship question, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said publicly and in documents submitted to lower federal courts that the decision to add the question followed a request by the Department of Justice, which he said had argued the question would make it easier to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Simply put: That wasn’t true. “Commerce went to great lengths to elicit the request from DOJ (or any other willing agency),” Roberts wrote after reviewing a mountain of evidence submitted. “And unlike a typical case in which an agency may have both stated and unstated reasons for a decision, here the VRA enforcement rationale — the sole stated reason — seems to have been contrived.”

That’s the chief justice of the United States writing about the conduct and truthfulness of Donald Trump’s administration. Though the language is understated, it’s a stunning rebuke.

Roberts continues: “We are presented, in other words, with an explanation for agency action that is incongruent with what the record reveals. … We cannot ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given.”

Because the stated reason was shown to be untrue, and no other reasons were given, the case is now sent back to the trial court. It remains possible that the administration can ultimately prevail in the case, should it provide a truthful answer for its motivations that survive the test of reasonableness. But given the tight deadlines for printing the 2020 Census, that’s far from certain.

If it wasn’t for the reason they gave, why then did the administration seek to add the question? It seems only reasonable to conclude it do for precisely the reasons critics alleged in the first place: To either suppress the count or make it easier to find noncitizens.

The ruling was disappointing in that it paves the way for such questions in the future, if only an administration is honest about its reasons. Roberts made clear that to the majority anyway, the bar to pass the reasonableness test in this context is low. (Four justices, led by Justice Stephen Breyer disagreed.)

But by rebuking the administration for its mendacity, the court has done what few other centers of power in our country have done: Imposed consequences for lying.

The court got that part absolutely right.

First Word pieces are short commentaries by individual members of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. While they tend to reflect the board's values, they exhibit the author's perspective rather than the institutional view. Lindenberger is deputy opinion editor.