Judge Blocks Trump Citizenship Question on 2020 Census

and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. In a highly anticipated ruling, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's plan to put a question about citizenship on the It's In a two seventy seven page opinion, Judge Jesse Furman said that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross violated the law and the public trust in putting that question on the census. Joining me is Thomas Wolfe, counsel with the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. Thomas, it is a long opinion. Can you

give us the main reasons? Judge Furman said he blocked the question. You're right, it was a long opinion and it's hot off the presses. But here's the general takeaway. We know that under federal law, in this case, it's the Administrative Procedure Act, agencies are supposed to have rational, intelligent, evidence based, and logical reasons for making the decisions they make when they exercise their powers and that they make all of those decisions clear in the representations to the public.

What Judge Furman said was, if you look at the paperwork on all the decisions made by Secretary Ross to add the citizenship question, he flew in the face of the evidence that his own agency at the Census Bureau,

had compiled. He created a pretext for adding the question, meaning the reason why he claimed he added the question wasn't the real reason he added the question, and that he violated all these different rules that are put in place to make sure that when the government makes decisions on our behalf, it makes some on the basis of

clear evidence, and they violated all those rules. Did the judge specifically address the plaintiff's claim and the claim of advocates at the real intent of the question was to intimidate illegal immigrants from answering and depress their official numbers in the census. But Judge Furman noted on that point was that there's still an open question about why Secretary

Ross ultimately decided to add the citizenship questions. Secretary Ross claimed that the reason why he was doing it was to help enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, but the evidence showed that that clearly was not the reason why he decided to make that decision. In fact, that was pure pretext, and Judge Furman described that as a sort

of laundering of some other intent. What Judge Furman noted, though, was that there wasn't enough evidence in the record to conclude that the question was at it for discriminatory purposes. At the same time, though, he said, had the plaintiffs been able to depose Secretary Ross, that is, get him up on the stand and ask him questions under oath, they might have been able to get at the real reason.

So the gist of it is on the basis of Judge Furman's opinion that we don't know exactly why the Census Bureau decided to add this question, and specifically Secretary Ross decided to add this question, but it certainly is not because of any interest in enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Was there any other defense put up by the Justice

Department besides that related to the Voting Rights Act? The Justice Department hinged a lot of its defense on this notion that everything that was happening here was purely above board and it was done to enforce the Voting Rights Act. They argued though in a a lot of their papers. But something that Judge Furman disposed it very quickly was that it wouldn't matter as Secretary Ross had some other reason for adding the question, as long as his stated reason,

the Voting Rights Act rationale was legit. As Judge Furman said, that doesn't hold water. That's not the way agencies should work. They shouldn't have secret reasons for doing what they're doing that they hide behind fake reasons that they give out to the public. So dj wasn't able to succeed on that front. There are several lawsuits to block the question. How does this opinion by a New York federal judge

fit In? This opinion lays out a very clear roadmap for the judges in the other cases that are currently depending in California and Maryland. They're not legally bound to follow Judge Furman's decision, but this decision is so thorough, incredibly well reasoned, and in many cases overlaps with issues that are raised in those cases that it's difficult to see these other courts arriving at alternative decisions. So I would say at this point, the challengers the question have

the wind at their back. They have real momentum. Now, now let's talk about the Supreme Court, which is hearing an appeal related to the trial in February. Has considered some aspects of it. Is it likely that the Supreme Court is going to have the final word on the citizenship question. It's hard to say exactly how the Supreme Court appeal process is going to play out because the Department of Justice has repeatedly said that it needs a final decision before June this year, and that's when the

census forms have to start going to the printer. That leaves us with a very compressed time frame. So it's almost likely that there will be an appeal. How exactly that plays out not abundantly clear at the moment. That should become clear in the next few weeks. But along and short of it is that the Supreme Court should have a ruling in this case that will serve as the final ruling before the end of its term, which happens at the end of June. Is June really a

hard and fast deadline or can that be moved? The census is a very delicate process that requires everything being done in a certain sequence at a certain time. So the Department of Justice and the Commerce Department have repeatedly emphasized that June is about as close to a hard deadline as you're going to get, and in that case, it seems like the courts are taking them at their word and will move forward on that basis. Now, what's

happening on the ground, so to speak, with the Census Bureau? Now, are they checking out how the questions are going, Are they doing any kind of testing or is it all on hold because of the lawsuits the bureau? And I think an important thing to emphasize here that comes out of Judge Freman's opinion is that the people that work at the Census Bureau are in many cases the lifetime professionals who are really dedicated to making sure the Census

goes off about a hitch. Not a lot of what's happened with the citizenship question was the result of folks at the Commerce Department overwriding what the Census Bureau would have preferred to do, given that it looks like this citizenship question up until Judge Freman's ruling was something that the administration wanted. There was already word that they were going to begin testing to see what kind of effects

the question would have. They're also analyzing the results of the one field test that was done in Rhode Island earlier in to see what effects um the environment of fear around adding the citizenship question may have. So there may be work going on right now to try to triage the damage. But hopefully moving forward, the citizenship question will not be on the census and the Census Bureau will no longer have to plan and prepare for that.

Some conservatives say this kind of question has been on the census before, why shouldn't it be on the census now. So in just about a minute, tell us why any representations that the Census has had a two year consistent history of asking about the citizenship question is misleading. Where it is not completely false, these questions have appeared only in a sporadic sense through the nineteenth century, at a time when the Census Bureau wasn't even a professional practice.

In fact, the Census Bureau didn't even exist. After fifty when the Census Bureau had actually developed the ability to see how well or how badly it was doing the job of counting everyone, they discovered that these kinds of very long census forms that included things like the citizenship question, or actually we in them to be constitutionally deficient in counting everyone. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much times for being on. That's Thomas Wolfe, counsel

with the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Grasso. This is Bloomberg Ye