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A spokesman for the Justice Department said the allegations that a 2015 study by a Republican expert on redistricting would have played a major role in the request to add a citizenship question to the census is unfounded.
In a letter last week, the ACLU, Common Cause and others said they found "new evidence" that the government's true motivation in adding the question was to improve the odds Republicans.
They referred to a recently released 2015 study by Dr. Thomas Hofeller, a Republican expert on redistricting, who stated that using "the voting age population" as the basis for distribution would be "advantageous for Republicans". and non-Hispanic whites ".
The challengers say that the new information shows that Hofeller has played a more important role in the decision to add the citizenship issue than the one that was revealed and that his study reveals the real motive behind the decision of the government. administration to add the question.
The Justice Ministry tore up the charges as "unfounded infringement of the integrity of the ministry and its employees," and a spokesman said the charges were based on known information. challengers for months.
According to the spokesman, the study of Hofeller, now deceased, "has played no role in the letter of the Ministry of Justice recommending the reinstatement of a citizenship issue in the census". Hofeller died last August.
The Justice Ministry refuted the allegations Monday in a six-page letter, along with several exhibits, to a federal judge in New York who scheduled a hearing on Wednesday.
In the documents filed by the court, the department describes as "false" the statement that an official of the Ministry of Justice relied on Hofeller's study.
In the case, the Department of Justice said that the top official John Gore had never testified wrongly and that "the statement that Gore relied on an unpublished private study to compiling widely known and publicly available information is absurd ".
The ministry accuses the challengers of "the conspiracy of a conspiracy theory implicating a dead political agent who is essentially based on the play on words".
District Judge Jesse Furman of the US District Court in the Southern District of New York ruled against the administration in January. In April, the Supreme Court heard the arguments of the case. A decision in one of the most anticipated cases of the warrant must be made by the end of June.
The Supreme Court has agreed to appeal in a timely manner. In court, Conservative judges seemed ready to side with the government and allow the question.
In a letter to Furman, the challengers claim that the evidence supports their argument that, although the administration claims that the issue was added to better comply with federal election laws, the real reason was to intimidate Hispanic households.
"The new evidence therefore contradicts not only the testimony in this case, but it also shows that those who built the reasoning of the VRA (Voting Rights Act) knew that adding a question about citizenship would not benefit Latino voters, but would rather facilitate a significant reduction in their political power, "the letter to the judge read.
The lawyers attached a copy of a statement from A. Mark Neuman, who would have been the expert advisor to the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. on this subject, in their letter to the judge.
Neuman testified that Hofeller was the "first person" who had suggested to him to add the question of citizenship. Neuman stated in his testimony that Hofeller told him that it would help maximize "Latin American representation".
"But new evidence previously obtained by a state court (…) show that Mr Hofeller knew instead that the addition of a citizenship question would have exactly the same effect. the opposite effect would disadvantage Latinos and benefit "non-Hispanic Whites", said the lawyers. the judge.
They also say that Hofeller "wrote" a "substantial part" of a draft letter that would eventually become the official letter from the Department of Justice asking the Commerce Department to add the citizenship issue.
"It's important because it shows that Hofeller's work was the basis of the DOJ's request to add the citizenship issue," said the ACLU's attorney. , Dale Ho.
"The bottom line is that the Trump administration does not deny that parts of its first draft application to add a question on citizenship to the census were written by Thomas Hofeller, who argued in favor of the question because it would be, in his words, "advantageous for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites," said Ho in a statement. "At this point, does anyone seriously believe that the # 39 Trump administration, which has not yet initiated proceedings under the law on voting rights, has gone through all these difficulties to be able to protect voters of color? "
The information was revealed after the death of Hofeller and the removal of his daughter, his ex-daughter, from his business. They included a hard disk that could hold about 75,000 files.
The common cause interest group was involved in an arbitrary libel case in North Carolina and subpoenaed documents hoping to better understand Hofeller's work in this area. He then found the relevant documents for his other census case.
Richard Hasen, of the University of California, Irvine, described the news as "a blockbuster", but doubted that Conservative Supreme Court judges agreed. He noted that in their pleadings, they accepted the "face value" of the justification of the administration by law, according to which the question was "necessary to protect Hispanic voters".
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