An ideologically divided Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to back the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
For roughly 80 minutes, the justices heard arguments in a challenge to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the census form, which lower court judges have found to be a violation of federal law and the Constitution.
But the court’s five conservative justices appeared poised to allow the question to remain on the census and seemed sympathetic to the Trump administration’s argument that a citizenship question was needed to bolster enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
By contrast, the arguments at times turned tense as the more liberal justices pressed Solicitor General Noel Francisco about concerns that including a citizenship question could depress responses from Hispanics and noncitizens in particular.
Critics of the move by Ross argued his decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause and warned that the question would cause a population undercount that disproportionately harms communities with large immigrant populations. – READ MORE