This article was updated July 3.
WASHINGTON — The
Justice Department announced July 2 it would no longer plan to add the citizenship
question to the 2020 census in response to the Supreme Court's recent decision
and amid pressing deadlines to begin printing the questionnaire forms.
The decision not
to move forward with the additional question was announced with disappointment.
Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that he strongly disagreed with the
high court's ruling over the planned additional question and President Donald
Trump tweeted that it was a "very sad time for America when the Supreme
Court of the United States won't allow a question of 'Is this person a Citizen
of the United States?' to be asked on the #2020 Census."
He also said he
asked the Commerce and Justice departments to "do whatever is necessary to
bring this most vital of questions, and this very important case, to a
successful conclusion."
Earlier that day,
the U.S. bishops praised the Supreme Court's decision June 27 to block the
Trump administration's citizenship question stressing that "the inclusion
of a citizenship question must ensure genuine reasons" for it.
The 5-4 ruling —
written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined in part by the other justices —
sent the case back to a lower court saying the administration's reason for
adding the citizenship question "seems to have been contrived."
The day the
decision was announced, President Donald Trump tweeted that he was asking his
lawyers if they can "delay the census, no matter how long" until the
"Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a
final and decisive decision."
The case is not
completely closed because the government still has the chance to offer more
acceptable reasons for the added question, but it is against time because the
process of starting to print the 600 million documents for next year's count
was scheduled to start July 1.
Trump told
reporters July 1 at the White House: "It's very important to find out if
somebody is a citizen as opposed to an illegal."
The U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops' statement on the high court's decision said:
"All persons in the United States should be counted in the census
regardless of their immigration status." It also reiterated its previous
statement on the issue by stressing that "questions regarding citizenship
should not be included in the census. We hope that this view will prevail,
whether by administrative action or judicial determination."
The statement was
issued by Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the USCCB
Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop Joe S. Vasquez,
of Austin, Texas, chairman of the Committee on Migration.
The census case
hit a potential twist in late May, a month after oral arguments, when newly
submitted evidence from the files of a deceased Republican strategist put the citizenship
question in another light: as a means to create an advantage for whites and
Republicans in future elections.
Then in late
June, a federal appeals court in Maryland allowed a lower court to study the
background of these files.
The government had
asked the Supreme Court to rule on the census dispute by the end of June, so
that it can finalize the census questionnaire and get the forms printed in time
for distribution next year.
During oral
arguments about the added census question in April, Justice Sonia Sotomayor
said: "There's no doubt people will respond less" to the census
questionnaire with a citizenship question, a point which she said "has
been proven in study after study."
Justices Neil
Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said citizenship questions were common in other
countries and had been on the U.S. forms over the years.
Both Roberts and
Justice Samuel Alito said the decision by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add
a citizenship question — for the first time since 1950 to improve compliance
with the Voting Rights Act — seemed reasonable. But Justice Elena Kagan said
Ross' reason for adding this question seemed "contrived."
In its defense,
U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the information it would provide
would help enforce the Voting Rights Act. When asked about the question leading
to potentially less participation, he said: "There is always going to be a
trade-off."
Lawyers for New
York, immigrant advocacy groups and the House of Representatives stressed that
the question would prevent noncitizens from filling out the census and have a
negative financial and political impact on communities with large immigrant
populations.
A similar
argument was raised in a friend-of-the-court brief opposed to the citizenship
question filed by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York and
Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens in New York. The brief stressed that
the added question would cause a "net differential undercount of people
who live in noncitizen and Hispanic households" and would result in a
"drastic and unwarranted reduction in funding in states and cities with
large populations of such persons" and also would impact social service
agencies.
In a USCCB
statement issued on the day of oral arguments for the census case, Bishops
Dewane and Vasquez stressed the importance of an accurate census count.
"The
Catholic Church and other service providers rely on the national census to
provide an accurate count in order to effectively serve those in need,"
said Bishop Dewane.
Bishop Vasquez
said all people should be counted in the census, regardless of their
citizenship and he said "proposed questions regarding immigration status
will obstruct accurate census estimates and ultimately harm immigrant families
and the communities they live in."
By one government
estimate, about 6.5 million people might decide not to participate in the
census with the added citizenship question.
The census is
rooted in the text of the Constitution, which requires an "actual
enumeration" of the population every 10 years. It determines federal
funding for roads and schools, congressional districting and number of
congressional representatives.