A New York federal district court has rejected the administration’s bid to place a citizenship question on the upcoming 2020 census. The U.S. Department of Commerce, which is the main defendant in the lawsuit, will most likely appeal this decision but this just deepens the legal, financial and operational challenges that the Census Bureau must endure just under 15 months away from the 2020 census, the data from which, states and local governments will use to redraw electoral lines. NPR lists the possible effects that the current government shutdown and this lawsuit will have on census 2020 planning here. Read the court’s opinion here.
Federal District Court Judge Jesse Furman concluded:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK , Case 1:18-cv-02921-JMF , 1-15-19. PDF
“Secretary Ross violated the APA in multiple independent ways. Most blatantly, Secretary Ross ignored, and violated, a statute that requires him, in circumstances like those here, to collect data through the acquisition and use of “administrative records” instead of through “direct inquiries” on a survey such as the census. Additionally, Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question was “arbitrary and capricious” on its own terms: He failed to consider several important aspects of the problem; alternately ignored, cherry-picked, or badly misconstrued the evidence in the record before him; acted irrationally both in light of that evidence and his own stated decisional criteria; and failed to justify significant departures from past policies and practices — a veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut APA violations. On top of that, Secretary Ross acted without observing procedures required by law, including a statute requiring that he notify Congress of the subjects planned for any census at least three years in advance. And finally, the evidence establishes that Secretary Ross’s stated rationale, to promote VRA enforcement, was pretextual — in other words, that he announced his decision in a manner that concealed its true basis rather than explaining it, as the APA required him to do.”
