Trump Says Citizenship Query Is ‘So Important’ for 2020 Census

(Bloomberg) -- The Justice Department is exploring ways to include a citizenship question on the U.S. census as President Donald Trump vows to fight on after the Supreme Court put the plan on hold.

Even with the government off for the Independence Day holiday, Trump said officials are at work on the matter after a federal judge in Maryland gave the U.S. until 2 p.m. Friday to reach a definitive conclusion. The Washington Post and Axios reported that the administration was considering the option of an executive order, though it isn’t clear if that strategy would be successful.

“So important for our Country that the very simple and basic ‘Are you a Citizen of the United States?’ question be allowed to be asked in the 2020 Census,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice are working very hard on this, even on the 4th of July!”

The Justice Department’s move Wednesday came a day after the administration said it was abandoning its plan to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census, an announcement Trump contradicted.

"We at the Department of Justice have been instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt told U.S. District Judge George Hazel in Maryland on Wednesday.

“We think there may be a legally available path under the Supreme Court’s decision. We’re examining that, looking at the near-term options to see whether that’s viable and possible,” Hunt said.

New York Case

In a separate case in New York, the Justice Department told a judge it was asked to reevaluate “all available options” in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. The government, which didn’t say who asked it to do so, said it may seek additional guidance from the Supreme Court to speed the litigation if it decides to move forward with the question.

Trump took a defiant stand on Wednesday, saying on Twitter that news reports about the Commerce Department dropping its push for a citizenship question were fake and the administration is “absolutely moving forward.”

That tweet prompted lawyers for New York state and a coalition of pro-immigrant groups to request a status conference before the judge in Manhattan to determine the government’s position on the citizenship question and whether “emergency relief,” such as a court order, may be necessary.

Dilute Power

In January, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan blocked the citizenship question after a two-week trial. The Supreme Court sped up consideration of the case, skipping over a lower appeals court, to produce a ruling in time to finalize the census before the surveys are printed.

The Supreme Court ruling last week was a win for immigrant-rights groups and Democrats who said the citizenship question was designed to dilute their voting power. They said that the citizenship question sought to reduce immigrants’ participation in the survey and that administration officials hid their true aim of boosting Republican and white voters.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had said the goal of the question was to help the Justice Department enforce the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters -- a claim with which the Supreme Court disagreed.

“I respect the Supreme Court but strongly disagree with its ruling regarding my decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 Census,” Ross said in a statement Tuesday. “The Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question.”

Supreme Court

The high court said the administration needed to put forward a rationale for the question that could pass legal muster. The court said Ross’s stated rationale for including the citizenship question was “contrived” and couldn’t be squared with the evidence about his true motivations.

At the hearing in Maryland, where one of several challenges to the census question was heard, Hazel said he’d reopen the case to consider whether there was a discriminatory motive behind the question if the U.S. planned to include the query, according to a transcript of Wednesday’s phone conference.

The government’s lawyer also told Hazel that the U.S. was “continuing with the process of printing the questionnaire without a citizenship question, and that process has not stopped.”

The U.S. Constitution requires a census every 10 years, and census day is set by federal law as April 1. The administration has said the 2020 census questionnaire needed to be ready for printing by June 30.

In a letter to Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that “as long as President Trump continues to try to add a citizenship question to the census, we will continue our work to expose the Trump administration’s true, corrupt motivations -- including holding the administration in contempt of Congress on the census.”

--With assistance from Bob Van Voris.

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net;Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka, Scott Lanman

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.