Fate of citizenship question back up in the air
WASHINGTON — A day after pledging that the 2020 census would not ask respondents about their citizenship, the Justice Department reversed course Wednesday and said it is hunting for a way to restore the question on orders from President Donald Trump.
Officials told a federal judge in Maryland that they thought there would be a way to still add the question, despite printing deadlines, and that they would ask the Supreme Court to send the case to district court with instructions to remedy the situation.
Trump had been frustrated with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for mishandling the White House’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, according to an administration official, and said Wednesday that he was “absolutely moving forward” with plans to add it despite a Supreme Court decision last week rejecting the move.
It was the second time that Trump said he was directing the Commerce Department to move forward with the plan, which critics contend is part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans. On Tuesday, the Justice Department said the census forms were being printed without the citizenship question, and Ross said that he was heeding the court’s ruling.
But the president was not letting the matter go.
“The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!” Trump wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.”
On Wednesday afternoon, White House officials were actively working on a way to satisfy Trump’s demand but had not yet settled on a solution.
Three separate federal courts — in Manhattan, Maryland and California — have ruled that the Commerce Department violated federal procedural law and the Constitution in hastily tacking the citizenship question onto the census last year. The Supreme Court upheld the Manhattan ruling last week.