The Commerce Department announced Monday night that the administration would reinstate the question of citizenship for the 2020 census, a contentious move President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has urged since the early days of his presidency. In a statement, the Commerce Department pointed to previous census questions as justification for the shift. “Between 1820 and 1950, almost every decennial census asked a question on citizenship in some form,” the
The Commerce Department announced Monday night that the administration would reinstate the question of citizenship for the 2020 census, a contentious move President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has urged since the early days of his presidency.
In a statement, the Commerce Department pointed to previous census questions as justification for the shift. “Between 1820 and 1950, almost every decennial census asked a question on citizenship in some form,” the statement read. The administration argues the change would improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
Democrats quickly expressed their opposition, questioning the constitutionality of the citizenship question. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed suit against the administration Monday night. “Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea — it is illegal,” Becerra wrote after the announcement in an op-ed alongside California secretary of state Alex Padilla.
“Innocuous at first blush, its effect would be truly insidious. It would discourage noncitizens and their citizen family members from responding to the census, resulting in a less accurate population count,” they wrote.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also took issue with the move. In a statement Tuesday morning, Pelosi argued that “a new citizenship question violates the clear constitutional mandate to provide an accurate count of all people living in the United States.”
Article 1, Section 2 of the U. S. Constitution calls for a census to be taken every decade for the purpose of apportioning seats to the House of Representatives, according to the number of “free persons” residing in each state. Democratic states with high immigrant populations fear the citizenship question will cause an undercount in their states, which could lead to diminished political representation in Congress. Presidential elections could also be affected – A 2015 piece in Politico estimated that illegal immigrants and noncitizen residents give Democrats a net gain of four electoral votes.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a memorandum at the time of the announcement that, after examining various potential impacts, he found “the need for accurate citizenship data and the limited burden that the reinstatement of the citizenship question would impose outweigh fears about potentially lower response rate.”
