WASHINGTON—Constitutional Accountability Center today is filing a brief in federal court on behalf of a bipartisan group of more than 100 current and former Members of Congress in support of the State of New York and the other plaintiffs in New York, et al. v. U.S. Department of Commerce, et al., a case challenging the Trump Administration’s wrongful insertion of a citizenship question into the 2020 Census.

CAC President Elizabeth Wydra said, “Our Constitution directs the government to count all persons every ten years in the Census. Article I together with the Fourteenth Amendment require this. Injecting an untested and unjustified citizenship question into the 2020 Census at the 11th hour before the counting begins—as the Trump Administration is attempting to do here over the advice of career Census officials—would be an end-run around the constitutional duty to count all persons. In addition to flouting the text, history and values of our founding charter, such a question would be incredibly damaging. It would undermine our democracy and shortchange already undercounted communities and leave them without the federal dollars needed for infrastructure, schools, and other critical services.”

Led by U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), co-chair of the House Census Caucus, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), today’s brief on behalf of a bipartisan group of more than 100 current and former Members of Congress also demolishes the government’s main justification for pushing a citizenship question into the 2020 Census, so-called enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. As the brief explains:

A citizenship question has never been viewed as necessary to ensure robust protection of the right to vote free from racial discrimination. Indeed, since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Census has never asked all persons to report their citizenship status. This is a specious justification for undercutting what the Constitution mandates: a count of all the people, regardless of their citizenship status.

Read the whole brief here.

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Resources:

CAC amicus brief on behalf of bipartisan current and former Members of Congress in New York v. Department of Commerce: https://www.theusconstitution.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/NY-v-Dept-of-Commerce-Brief-FINAL.pdf

Letter of Constitution, Civil Rights and Democracy Organizations to Secretary Ross: Reject Mandatory Citizenship Question on 2020 Census, March 22, 2018: https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/release-constitution-civil-rights-democracy-organizations-secretary-ross-reject-mandatory-citizenship-question-2020-census/

CAC Issue Brief: The Cornerstone of Our Democracy: The Census Clause and the Constitutional Obligation to Count All Persons, David H. Gans, March 19, 2018: https://www.theusconstitution.org/think_tank/cornerstone-democracy-census-clause-constitutional-obligation-count-persons/

“Count all the people, just as the Constitution says,” San Antonio Express-News, David H. Gans, March 9, 2018: https://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Count-all-the-people-just-as-the-Constitution-12742298.php

CAC Letter to Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of Commerce: Census Citizenship Question “Threatens to Undermine Your Constitutional Duty,” February 15, 2018: https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/release-letter-secretary-ross-census-citizenship-question-threatens-undermine-constitutional-duty/

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Now in our tenth year, Constitutional Accountability Center is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history. Visit the new CAC website at www.theusconstitution.org.

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