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The administration is asking a lower court to block the testimony of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as she prepares to ask the Supreme Court to review the lawsuits over the citizenship issue of the 2020 census.
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The administration is asking a lower court to block the testimony of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as she prepares to ask the Supreme Court to review the lawsuits over the citizenship issue of the 2020 census.
Education Images / UIG via Getty Images
The Trump administration is taking steps to advance the legal battle around its controversial plan to add a citizenship status question to the 2020 census at the US Supreme Court.
According to a report filed on Friday, justice department lawyers – who represent the administration in all six trials across the country – are preparing to appeal recent rulings from lower courts for the testimony of two key public servants. Trump administration behind the question: the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, and the head of the Department of Justice, John Gore.
Plaintiffs' lawyers in the two main cases prepared to question Ross and Gore during their final weeks of evidence gathering. A potential lawsuit for both New York cases is scheduled to begin Nov. 5 in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York.
But in the request of the administration addressed to US District Judge Jesse Furman, his lawyers asked to block all the remaining depositions and to document requests for documents relating to these two cases "pending review" by the Court supreme.
The Trump administration challenges Furman's decision, allowing plaintiffs' lawyers to question Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau as head of the Commerce Department. In March, Ross announced that he was approving the Department of Justice's request to add a citizenship question to the forms for the next national enumeration. On Friday, a judge of the US Circuit's second appellate court put Ross's evidence on hold while the appeals court examined the administration's request to block it.
Earlier this week, a panel of three 2nd Circuit judges upheld Furman's decision regarding Gore's filing. He heads the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, which argues that the Department of Justice needs answers to the question of citizenship to better enforce the protections of racial and linguistic minorities against discrimination.
The plaintiffs, who include dozens of states, cities, and other groups who want the issue removed, claim that Ross abused his authority and discriminated against the communities of color of immigrants by ordering the 2020 census. not asked every American household since 1950.
Critics from the Census Bureau's research point of view suggest that citizen status may discourage households with non-citizens, including unauthorized immigrants, from participating in the census of every person living in the United States.
The Trump administration claims that Ross and Gore's filing is not necessary to resolve these lawsuits and that the courts should instead rely on internal memos, e-mails and other documents already published by the administration.
"The validity of the decision of the secretary is duly judged on this objective file, without investigation of the deliberative process of Secretary Ross and the subjective reasons that he could have had to promote the restoration of citizenship," wrote the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice. 2nd circuit to block Ross's deposition.
However, Furman has notably decided that officials should be removed because of documents suggesting that a better enforcement of the voting rights law was not the main driver of the citizenship claim.
"Secretary Ross must sit for a statement, partly because his intent and credibility are directly involved in these cases," Furman wrote in a notice released last week.
As reported by NPR, an internal e-mail exchange issued as part of the trials showed that the Trump administration was preparing to defend the citizenship issue months before the Justice Department formally submitted his application in December 2017.
"Since this matter will be submitted to the Supreme Court," Earl Comstock, a Commerce Department official, wrote to Ross in an email in August 2017 to discuss an issue of citizenship. "We must be diligent in preparing the administrative record."
Ross responded later: "We should be very careful about everything, whether or not it is likely to wind up in the SC."
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