17 states, six cities, and DC sue to remove controversial citizenship question from Census.
Municipal and state governments with large foreign born populations are trying to turn back the use of a census question they feel is unconstitutional
Led by New York, a group of 17 states, six cities, and the District of Columbia along with the U.S. Conference of Mayors filed a federal lawsuit against the Census Bureau and Commerce Department to remove a new citizenship question which has not appeared on the Census since 1950 from appearing on the upcoming 2020 Census.
The suit, as NPR and the Chicago Tribune reports, comes more than a week after California filed a similar lawsuit federal court against Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau, and Census Bureau officials.
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The suit was filed by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court and was joined by: Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.
The cities are: Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, Seattle, and San Francisco, plus the bipartisan United States Conference of Mayors.
The government’s reasoning
The Justice Department requested the question be added back to the questionnaire claiming that it did so so it can enforce the Voting Rights Act with a better count of voting-age citizens. But New York and other states are alleging that adding the question is unconstitutional because it would undermine the government’s constitutional responsibility of counting every person living in the U.S. every 10 years.
The complaint also alleges that the addition of a citizenship question violates the Administrative Procedure Act because there are sufficient citizenship numbers already to enforce the Voting Rights Act and the change does not meet the Census Bureau’s own standards for testing new questions.
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According to the lawsuit, nearly a quarter of households in New York state did not return their 2010 census questionnaire, requiring an in-person follow-up. It noted that one-in-five New York residents were born in another country.
