Lawsuit on citizen question spotlights Ross’ role
WASHINGTON — The first trial challenging the Trump administration’s plan to ask people in the 2020 census if they are U.S. citizens has unearthed evidence that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross began pushing for the question even before he was confirmed last year and that he took advice from anti-immigration hard-liners.
In U.S. District Court in New York’s Southern District, the trial could conclude this week amid speculation that the Supreme Court likely will decide the issue. The case is on a fast track, given the need to make printing arrangements soon for millions of census questionnaires.
Another lawsuit, filed by groups in Texas — where an undercount of Latinos could have profound consequences — is scheduled to be heard in federal court in January and alleges a “conspiracy” to violate civil rights.
Critics of including the question in the census say Texas, with an estimated 1.6 million undocumented immigrants, has much to lose by an undercount of Latinos. Texas stands to add three congressional districts after the next census because of population shifts. In addition, an inaccurate count threatens Texas’ share of the $600 billion in federal funds distributed according to a state’s population.
Trump allies contend that the government has unlimited authority to conduct the census and that it’s reasonable to collect information on the number of undocumented immigrants in the country, data that can help allocate government services.
Ross has persisted with demands to ask the citizenship question despite worries by many, including his own Census Bureau, that it would jeopardize an accurate count of minorities.
Earlier this month, a report commissioned by the Census Bureau concluded that asking the question
could pose a “major barrier” to the willingness of some Latinos to fill out the forms.
“Focus group participants expressed intense fear that information will be shared with other government agencies to help them find undocumented immigrants,” the report concluded, adding that Latinos did not believe the Census Bureau’s promise of confidentiality.
The case in New York — brought by sixteen states, seven cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors — argues that asking the question violates the Constitution’s requirement to conduct an “actual enumeration” of the population.
Bannon’s involvement
Five former bureau directors from both Republican and Democratic administrations have entered the case supporting claims against the government, among them Steven Murdock, a Rice University sociologist who led the census under President George W. Bush.
“I’m concerned about it,” Murdock said. “I think that for many people with uncertain status that the inclusion of that type of question is going to cause them not to respond.”
“One could say they’re not citizens. But they’re people that counties and other jurisdictions provide for, and it’s very difficult to plan budgets and delivery of their services without actual numbers.”
Emails that surfaced in the New York case spell out involvement by a list of people including former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon and Kris Kobach, who headed the abolished Commission on Voter Fraud. Kobach last week lost to a Democrat in the Kansas governor’s race.
The emails raise questions about Ross’ reasons for changing the census form and his truthfulness with Congress.
In March, Ross announced the decision to add the question to the census: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” Shortly before, he testified in Congress that the decision was “solely” at the request of the Justice Department for use in enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
But emails disclosed that long before, Ross was pressing the Census Bureau, over which he presides, and a reluctant Justice Department to proceed with the question.
“I am mystified why nothing has been done in response to my months-old request that we include the citizenship question,” he wrote in May 2017 to Commerce Department aides.
Despite telling Congress he had no contact with the White House on the matter, emails showed that he had talked on the phone with Bannon that spring. The topic was Bannon’s request that Ross speak with Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state at the time and a hard-liner on immigration policy.
In an email from Kobach to Ross that became part of the court record,
Kobach suggests wording for the citizenship question. He noted “the problem that aliens who do not actually reside in the United States are still counted for congressional reapportionment purposes.”
The politics underlying the question has been a concern of Democrats in Congress, who are expected to be aggressive in overseeing the census next year after winning control of the House in the midterm elections.
The Trump re-election arm has cheered the initiative, proclaiming to its contact list this year that “the president wants the United States 2020 census to ask people whether or not they’re citizens. In another era, this would be common sense.”
Texas suit alleges conspiracy
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which gathers information for a variety of reasons, asks people about their citizenship and where they were born. But the question has not appeared on the decennial count of the population since Harry Truman was president.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which presses for immigration limits, is among groups pressing the administration to hold firm.
“You have to think that the people opposing it don’t want this information to be collected and revealed,” federation spokesman Ira Mehlman said.
Mehlman argued that fears
about release of information to Border Patrol agents are “ridiculous. You’re talking about how people out there in the streets with T-shirts that say ‘Undocumented and Unafraid’ are going to be terrified by a question on an anonymous form.”
All told, six suits have been filed to block the question. A consolidated case will be argued in Maryland on behalf of the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus; the Texas House Hispanic Caucus; La Union Del Pueblo Entero, which is a Rio Grande Valley group; the San Antonio-based Southwest Voter Registration Education Project; and other organizations.
In alleging conspiracy, the suit on behalf of the Texas interests goes beyond what is being argued in the New York court. The complaint alleges a deliberate effort by Ross and others to deprive immigrants and minorities of their rights to equal representation and fair allocation of federal money.
“I think it’s pretty clear that Ross was conspiring with Bannon and Kobach to get the request form for the question from the Justice Department and then get it granted,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing the groups in court.
“This has special significance in Texas, which gained new representation in Congress last time because of increasing Latino and African-American populations,” he said.