A lawsuit was filed on Thursday against the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census, which immigrant rights groups maintain discriminates against ethnic minorities for political gain and violates the Constitution.
Twenty-one organizations filed the lawsuit in the federal district court in Maryland, which represents the fifth legal challenge to the administration’s move. It alleges that the question violates the clause of the Constitution which requires that an “actual Enumeration” of every person living in the United States takes place every 10 years.
It further argues that some minority groups may be scared by the question and could answer dishonestly, leading to a disproportionate undercount of non-U.S. citizens as well as of the family members of non-U.S. citizens, The Hill reports. This would, in turn, reduce minority representation in the House of Representatives and state and local governments, the plaintiffs said.
Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund which represents the plaintiffs, even went as far as to argue the administration’s decision fits a pattern of attacks on the legitimacy of Latinos and other minorities that dates to the start of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
“Organizational Plaintiffs’ members, clients, and constituents live in communities whose residents are less likely to respond to the citizenship question on the Census out of fear that Census responses will not be kept confidential and that there may be adverse immigration enforcement against non-U.S. citizen household members,” the groups argue in the lawsuit.
They are requesting that the citizenship question is declared unconstitutional.
The Justice Department, however, originally claimed that the question is necessary so that it can collect citizenship data to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. The decision by the Department of Commerce to approve the request back in March caused a nationwide uproar and pushed courts across the country to intervene.
A Justice Department spokesman said the government was looking forward to defending the citizenship question in court, adding that the Census Bureau itself has acknowledged that its existing data on citizenship “is not the most appropriate data to use as a basis for redistricting.”
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