Judge belies "serious" allegations of concealing census questions: NPR

A federal judge in New York has delayed consideration of allegations that the Trump administration has concealed the real motive for adding a citizenship issue to the 2020 census.

This decision puts the focus on the Supreme Court, which should make its decision on the legal plight of the census issue, which is the subject of much controversy, by the end of the year. of the month of June.

At a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, US District Judge Jesse Furman called the allegations of the plaintiffs "serious" in one of the lawsuits.

He added that he was "extremely conscious" that his earlier decision to block projects related to the issue was currently before the Supreme Court and that he saw "no reason to rush this process" because the new allegations are "incidental" to issues including court.

"I do not want to do anything that can cross the front line or be seen as such," Furman said.

"The shadow" of the allegations

Trump administration lawyers and plaintiffs who have brought the allegations agreed on a timetable that could be extended in early August.

With the Supreme Court's mandate coming to an end later this month, the judges could rule soon to allow the administration to include in the National Chief's next count forms the following question: "This is anyone a citizen of the United States? " The court is under pressure to make a decision in time for the printing of paper forms for the 2020 census to begin, as planned and budgeted, by July 1.

Nevertheless, plaintiffs' lawyers, led by the New York Immigration Coalition, say they are determined to continue this summer by claiming that John Gore, a Justice Department official, and A. Mark Neuman, former advisor to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census – gave false or misleading testimony about the origins of the citizenship issue.

The Trump administration said it wanted to know the issue in order to better protect the voting rights of racial minorities.

But the plaintiffs argue that the administration orchestrated a concealment of the real reason for the question – allegedly, to collect information on citizenship that could be used to redraw the electoral districts in ways that favor Republicans and non whites. Hispanic. It was a plan developed by a great Republican strategist, Thomas Hofeller, whose records were recently sent to plaintiffs' lawyers from hard disks discovered by his daughter after his death last year.

"Does the Supreme Court want to make a decision in the shadow of this type of allegations?" Dale Ho, plaintiffs' attorney at the ACLU, asked after the hearing outside the courthouse. "It's a question to which we must not answer, but to the court."

"We want to know the truth," said John Freedman, another plaintiff's attorney whose law firm Arnold & Porter got Hofeller's papers. "We believe that, whatever its decision, the Supreme Court will be interested in the truth."

An "eleventh hour attempt"

In a lawsuit filed in court earlier this week, DOJ lawyers dismissed the charges, writing that Hofeller had played "no role" in drafting the department's official letter to the Census Bureau asking a question about citizenship.

Neuman, who denied the charges against him and did not appear at Wednesday's hearing, declined to comment on the NPR case.

"As we have said previously, the complainants' attempt to derail the Supreme Court's resolution of this case is without merit, "Justice Ministry spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement. Written after Wednesday's hearing, the ministry and its employees are only based on exalted speculation and supposed "new" evidence that the plaintiffs have actually known for months. "

This evidence includes a first version of the request for question from the administration. He cites the application of the Voting Rights Act as a justification for the application of the question of citizenship. As part of the prosecution, Justice Department lawyers provided this document, among other things, to plaintiffs' lawyers in October. The plaintiffs' lawyers say however that they have only recently discovered that one section corresponds word for word to a paragraph found in Hofeller's documents.

Another complicated twist

Wednesday's hearing, which lasted about 15 minutes, marked an unexpected comeback in Manhattan Federal Court for both parties' lawyers, who concluded a hearing trial in November.

Nearly five months after Furman had issued the country's first ruling aimed at blocking the plans of the administration to add the citizenship issue to the 2020 census forms – and more than a month after that the Supreme Court heard her arguments in April – lawyers appeared before Furman again because of Hofeller's surprise discovery of hard drives.

The revelations of Hofeller's records complicate not only the two citizenship trials in New York, but also other cases in the country.

In light of the documents, the plaintiffs in two lawsuits in Maryland asked US District Judge George Hazel to reconsider claims that he ruled in April did not have sufficient supporting evidence. They include allegations that the issue was aimed at discriminating against immigrant communities of color and that there was a conspiracy among Trump administration officials to violate the constitutional rights of these communities by adding the issue.

On Wednesday, Hazel scheduled a hearing on the plaintiffs claim on June 18th.