Census question sparks lawsuit
State says citizenship query added by Trump administration could lead to major undercount
For the first time in 70 years, the U.S. Census in 2020 will ask about residents’ citizenship, a controversial decision by the Trump administration that prompted a swift lawsuit from California officials who fear the question could lead to a major undercount of population in the Golden State.
In an eight-page memo released Monday night, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the citizenship question would be included in the next census to better enforce the Voting Rights Act and to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The question was originally requested by the Justice Department, Ross wrote.
The decision immediately sparked outrage among Demo- crats and immigrant advocates, who fear the question will deter many immigrants from participating. If the census undercounts California residents, it could have farreaching impacts, with a potential reduction in federal resources for the state and fewer seats in Congress.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra quickly shot back with a lawsuit, arguing that the Constitution required the federal government to make an accurate count of citizen and noncitizen populations, and that the administration’s move violated federal law because it was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“Adding a question on citizenship threatens to derail the integrity of the entire process,” Becerra said Tuesday, warning that an undercount would mean less federal support for California’s schools and public safety agencies.
The census is the latest front in the ongoing le-
gal battle between California and the White House. The state has filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the federal government over everything from environmental regulations to health care policy, and the Justice Department is suing California over its laws protecting undocumented immigrants.
In New York, the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said he was leading a separate multistate lawsuit to stop the move, and officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington said they would join the effort.
The last time all U.S. residents were asked about their citizenship was in 1950, when census respondents were asked, “If foreign born, is the person naturalized?”
But supporters of the Trump administration point out that less sweeping surveys like the American Community Survey have continued to ask about citizenship in recent years. The question was also asked on the longform census questionnaire, which was distributed to one of every six households until it was removed in 2010.
California has “more to lose” from a citizenship question than any other state because it has the largest immigrant population, more than 10 million people, said Karin Mac Donald, a demographer and election law expert at UC Berkeley. The state also has many residents in other population groups that are considered hard to count for other reasons, such as minorities and renters.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that unless California manages to do a lot of outreach to these extremely vulnerable populations, we’re going to lose billions in federal funding,” Mac Donald said. She urged state leaders to invest resources in publicity campaigns to get immigrants to complete their census forms and make sure they’re counted.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget included more than $40 million for census outreach efforts.
The most long-term impact of a California undercount would be the state’s representation in Congress. Every 10 years, the number of representatives per state is adjusted based on census results, taking into account the state’s total population, including undocumented people. If the census counts fewer Californians, it could mean the state would get fewer than its current 53 House of Representatives members starting in the 2022 elections.
Based on the most recent population growth projections from December 2017, the state is expected to have the same number of representatives after the upcoming census. The Census Bureau estimated 37.3 million Californians in 2010, and 39.5 million in 2017. The state has never seen a decrease in its congressional representation — but a large undercount would change that.
Census Bureau employees also have publicly warned about the impact of a citizenship question. In a memo written by the bureau last year, researchers noted a “new phenomenon” in which fear among many respondents, particularly immigrants, “increased markedly” in the previous year. In one case, a Spanish-speaking staffer recounted seeing a Latino family move out of a mobile home after she tried interviewing them.
Wei Lee, a 29-year-old undocumented resident of San Francisco, said he and his family would be worried about filling out the census if it included a question about their citizenship.
“Any kind of information that is disclosed in the census might get back at us somehow,” said Lee, who came to the U.S. from his native Brazil as a teenager. “I don’t know whether they would share that information with ICE.”
The Trump administration argues that obtaining broader and more specific data on citizenship is crucial to determine the population of eligible voters in each individual census block, a data point that’s not currently available. Officials say having that information will help them determine potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voting policies.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that the decision was made by the Commerce Department and would help preserve voting rights.
“This detrimental change will inject fear and distrust into vulnerable communities, and cause traditionally undercounted communities to be even further underrepresented,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the question would also impact U.S. citizens who live in households with undocumented relatives. “The census should not be a political football, used to depress responses from immigrant communities and target states like California,” she said.
“This detrimental change will inject fear and distrust into vulnerable communities.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco