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President Trump listens to Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census, speaking at the White House. Ross, including the 2020 census, approved the question, "Is this person a United States citizen?"
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
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Mark Wilson / Getty Images
President Trump listens to Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census, speaking at the White House. Ross, including the 2020 census, approved the question, "Is this person a United States citizen?"
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Plans by the Trump administration to add an extremely controversial citizenship issue to the 2020 census have been hit hard by the courts.
The question asks, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"
A third federal judge ruled that the decision to include it on the national number forms was illegal.
In Maryland, US District Judge George Hazel concluded that the decision of Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census, to add the issue violated administrative law. Federal judges in New York and California have reached the same conclusion.
Similar to the previous ruling in California, the judge also concluded that the inclusion of the issue would be unconstitutional, because, in a context of stronger rules on immigration and anti-immigrant speeches, hinders the government's ability to count every inhabitant of the Constitution requires.
Hazel ruled that the plaintiffs had not provided sufficient evidence to prove two additional assertions: to add the question was intended to discriminate against Latinos, Americans from the United States. Asian origin and immigrants; and that violating the constitutional rights of non-citizens and people of color was part of a conspiracy within the Trump administration.
This last district court decision in this legal battle that lasts most of the year should be the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court.
A hearing at the Supreme Court The question is whether the question is constitutional and whether the New York decision, which has already blocked the question of citizenship, should be held on April 23, and judges should decide by June on whether the 2020 census will eventually include the question.
President Trump recently weighed on the controversy with a tweet call a census without the "essential" question of "meaningless and wasteful" citizenship of the billions that cost the workforce.
The Trump administration urged the Department of Justice to get answers to the question in order to better enforce part of the voting rights law that protects racial and linguistic minorities from discrimination.
For California judgment, US District Judge Richard Seeborg wrote in his opinion that the application of civil rights law was "only an excuse for concealing unexplained desire." the secretary to add the question of citizenship to the census ".
If the question is included, the Census Bureau expects fewer households to respond spontaneously to the census, especially among Latinos and households composed of non-citizens, including unauthorized immigrants.
Critics of the issue fear that this will affect the accuracy of the new population figures, which determine the number of congressional seats and electoral college votes that each state gets. Census figures also show how about $ 880 billion a year in federal taxes for Medicaid, schools and other public services are distributed to local communities across the country.
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