At least 12 US states to sue Trump over census citizenship question
At least 12 US states say they will sue the administration of President Donald Trump over a decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census.
The decision by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add the question was announced on Monday amid concerns that the change will compromise the accuracy of the population count.
The Trump administration supported the move by saying the question was needed to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, which depends on accurate estimates of voting-eligible populations.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the decision to collect citizenship data through the decennial census was “necessary for the Department of Justice to protect voters.”
“I think that it is going to determine the individuals in our country, and provide information that allows us to comply with our own laws and with our own procedures,” she said.
On Tuesday, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said he was leading a multistate suit to block the move, with officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington voicing their support for the effort.
In addition, the State of California lodged a separate lawsuit late Monday night.
“The census is supposed to count everyone,” said Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts. “This is a blatant and illegal attempt by the Trump administration to undermine that goal, which will result in an undercount of the population and threaten federal funding for our state and cities.”
According to the Constitution, every resident of the United States must be counted in a decennial census regardless of their citizenship status.
The opponents of the added question argued it was certain to depress response to the census from noncitizens and even undocumented immigrants.
They accused the Trump administration of adding the question to reduce the population count in the predominantly Democratic areas where more immigrants live, prior to state and national redistricting in 2021.
Trump’s immigration policies have sparked protests both inside the US and abroad since he took office in January.
Last year, the president scrapped the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, his predecessor Barack Obama put in place to protect young immigrants from deportation.
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