The Big Story: SCOTUS set to rule on Trump citizenship query
A ruling from the Supreme Court could come as soon as Monday despite pleas from AAPI immigrant advocacy groups
Published in
2 min readJun 16, 2019
Editor’s Note: This is a preview of the June 16, 2019 edition of The Yappie, a newsletter about Asian American power, politics, and influence. Subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter every Sunday morning, with additional coverage and resources. Subscribe for free here.
Immigration advocates are mobilizing in a last-minute effort to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to delay issuing a ruling on whether the Trump administration can proceed with adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. But the court appears poised to ignore their pleas and could release a decision as soon as 10 a.m. EST on Monday. Here’s how we got here…
- Background: Three federal judges halted the Trump administration’s plans to add a citizenship question, saying that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Rosscircumvented government procedures and violated the Constitution. The government asked for the Supreme Court to review the rulings, and the justices heard oral argument in late April.
- Documents obtained by the New York Times in late May appeared to show that deceased GOP operative Thomas Hofeller played a role in efforts to add the question to advantage whites and Republicans, undercutting claims by Sec. Ross that the U.S. Department of Justice needed it for “more effective enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ denied that Hofeller’s materials were used in drafting its citizenship query requests after challengers in the census case notified the Supreme Court of the new evidence.
- But a high-ranking Census Bureau official privately discussed the citizenship question issue with Hofeller in 2015, according to emails cited in a new court filingin Maryland by Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC.
- How will SCOTUS rule? Advocacy groups have asked the Supreme Court to hold off on ruling on the citizenship query, but a delay is highly unlikely. In remarks to the Second Circuit Judicial Conference, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ominously linked the census case to the court’s decision last year to uphold the travel ban inTrump v. Hawaii, stating that the ruling “granted great deference to the Executive.”
- Why this matters: Census Bureau research shows that Asian Americans are the least likely group to complete their census questionnaires — and AAPIs could be the most impacted by the addition of a citizenship question. An undercount could result in reduced public funding and representation for Asian American communities, including for health care and interpretation services.
