Cities Are Bracing for 2020 Census Chaos
Erica M
The Supreme Court may decide the fate of the citizenship question that the Trump administration wants to add to the census.
The first federal court decision about the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census did not leave much room for debate. U.S. District Court Judge Jesse M. Furman’s 277-page ruling, described as “crystal clear” and “remarkably restrained” by constitutional scholars and lawyers, outlined what Furman called a “veritable smorgasbord” of administrative law violations by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who misled Congress when he said that the Department of Justice had originally requested the citizenship question.
But this court’s decision won’t be the last word in the matter. On Tuesday, a federal court in Maryland began hearing a suit brought forward by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Asian Americans Advancing Justice that argues that Ross, President Donald Trump, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and former White House advisor Stephen Bannon conspired to deprive minorities of equal representation. That’s just one of eight pending challenges (not counting appeals) over the citizenship question.
Whether the 2020 count features a question about citizenship will likely fall to the U.S. Supreme Court—maybe even before an appeals court takes up the case, if the Department of Justice gets its way. Any decision will come too late for leaders responsible for preparing for a census that already faces unique challenges. Some of those obstacles have nothing to do with the lofty constitutional questions before the court—from the tech uptake associated with putting the census online for the first time to the task of hiring more than half a million census takers in a strong economy.
With the federal government stuck in shutdown mode and the central question hanging over the count lost in legal limbo, city leaders have little choice but to brace for chaos.
