How the question on citizenship of the 2020 census is found in court: NPR

At the beginning of the Trump administration, senior officials discussed adding a controversial issue to the census that the federal government has not asked every household since 1950 – the status of US citizen.

The political idea became reality in March when, against the recommendations of the Census Bureau, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross used his authority over the census and approved the proposed addition to the following question: "This person is she a citizen of the United States? "

This decision triggered what could become one of the most influential legal battles of the next decade. More than two dozen states and cities, as well as other groups, have initiated six lawsuits in the country against the Trump administration to get the issue resolved.

The first lawsuit on the issue of citizenship is scheduled to begin Monday in New York. It should last two weeks. Regardless of the winning party, district court decisions in all of these cases will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Ross argues that the Department of Justice needs answers to the citizenship question to better enforce some of the voting rights law. But the plaintiffs cite a Census Bureau study showing that in the current climate of mounting immigration controls and growing anti-immigrant sentiments, asking questions about citizenship could prevent households from non-citizens from participating and compromise the accuracy of the information collected.

This, in turn, could alter the critical data that will be used to form the underlying power structures of the country until 2030. The number of congressional seats and electoral college votes obtained by each state after the workforce count in 2020 is determined by this total. Census data is used to redraw political districts at the local and state levels. They also serve as a guide for distributing about $ 800 billion a year in federal taxes to finance schools, roads and other public institutions and services in the United States.

How the question of citizenship led to the census and then to the court is documented in a series of internal emails and memos published as part of the prosecution. Since their first release in June, Commerce's Public Affairs Bureau has generally declined to comment on NPR's information contained in the documents, citing lawsuits.

"The administrative record shows that the Department of Commerce is immersed in legal, policy and program considerations before restoring the citizenship issue in the decennial census," Ross said in a written statement in June. "I am convinced that after months of examination and consideration, this administrative record proves that the return of the question of citizenship to the decennial census is the right choice that will allow our country to have information from the most complete and accurate census possible. "

The contradictions in Ross's testimony on the issue in Congress have, however, led some Democratic lawmakers to ask Ross for inquiries and his decision. It all boils down to Why did the Trump Administration decide to use the 2020 census to determine who lives in the country and is not a US citizen?

Here's an overview of what we know about adding the question to the census and the following lawsuits:

January 2017: The Washington Post and Vox publish what would have been a draft decree asking the director of the Census Bureau "to include questions to determine US citizenship and immigrant status in the detailed decennial census questionnaire." ". Until now, the White House has not yet issued a prescription. The American Community Survey, a Census Bureau survey that replaced the long-form census, already includes a question about citizenship. The Department of Justice has relied on citizenship data to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

February 27, 2017: The Senate votes to confirm Wilbur Ross at the head of the Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau.

March 10, 2017: Commerce Department Chief Earl Comstock E-mails Ross and Eric Branstad, White House Advisor, to Confirm Census Bureau Includes Non-Citizens Residing in the United States, Including Non-Immigrants authorized, in a demographic base to determine the distribution of seats and votes of the Electoral College. .

March 28, 2017: The Census Bureau sends a report to Congress on the issues it plans to pose for the 2020 Census. Citizenship is not included among these topics.

April 5, 2017: Ross' executive assistant, Brooke Alexander, e-mails her wife, Hilary Geary Ross, about Steve Bannon, then chief strategist for the White House, wishing Ross to talk to someone at the census.

May 2, 2017: "I do not understand why nothing has been done in response to my request for the inclusion of the issue of citizenship dating back several months," writes Ross in an email to Ellen Herbst, a senior Department of Commerce, which responds: "We must work with justice to get them to ask for citizenship to be reconstituted as a census issue."

May 24, 2017: "The secretary seemed … puzzled at not including citizenship in 2020," Commerce Department chief David Langdon wrote in an e-mail to the Census Bureau officials. He asks "what criteria do we push for" a question about citizenship in the American Community Survey – an annual survey that about one in 38 households in the United States is legally required to answer – and not the 2020 census, which includes each household.

July 14, 2017: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach invited Ross to "follow up on our phone conversation a few months ago". Kobach suggests formulating a question on citizenship in the 2020 census, which includes response options regarding immigration status, after noting "the problem that foreigners who do not actually reside in the United States are always taken into account for the purpose of distribution by the Congress ".

July 21, 2017: Kobach wrote in an email to Wendy Teramoto, then Ross's chief of staff, that "under the direction of Steve Bannon", he briefly spoke on the phone "on the phone" about the addition of a question of citizenship "a few months earlier".

July 28, 2017: The acting head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, Thomas Wheeler, told his aides that he was resigning, reports Carrie Johnson, of NPR. John Gore supports the unit, which enforces the law on voting rights.

August 8, 2017: "Where is the DoJ in their analysis?" Ross asks Comstock in an e-mail exchange about citizenship. "If they still have not reached a conclusion, please, let me know your contact person and I will call the AG." The next day, Comstock responded: "As this matter will be submitted to the Supreme Court, we must be diligent in preparing the administrative record."

September 8, 2017: In an internal memo to Ross, Comstock explains how he asked several federal agencies to ask for the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census. "The justice staff did not want to raise the issue given the difficulties that justice faced in the press at the time (the whole issue of Comey), "he wrote. After contacting the Department of Homeland Security, Comstock was referred to the Department of Justice.

September 13, 2017: In an email, Gore asks to talk about a "DOJ-DOC problem" with Teramoto. He then puts her in touch with Danielle Cutrona, a Justice Department official who writes in an email: "After what John told me, it seems like we can do everything you can need us and that the delay was due to a lack of communication.The AG is eager to help. "

September 19, 2017: "Wendy and I talked to the AG yesterday," Ross wrote in an e-mail about the census to the Commerce Department's General Counsel, Peter Davidson. "Follow up so we can solve this problem today."

November 27, 2017: "The census is about to start translating the questions into multiple languages," Ross wrote in a follow-up email to Davidson. "We do not have any more time, please call me tomorrow with the Head of Justice, we need to solve this problem."

December 15, 2017: Commerce Department lawyer James Uthmeier e-mails a copy of a letter from the Department of Justice dated December 12, 2017 to the Acting Director of the Census Bureau, Ron Jarmin. The letter officially asks the office to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census to help the ministry better enforce the protections provided by the law on voting rights against discrimination at the polls. racial and linguistic minorities.

December 22, 2017: In response to the request from the Department of Justice, Jarmin is trying to arrange a meeting between the Department and the Census Bureau to discuss an alternative to adding an question of citizenship. Jarmin writes in an email that the compilation of existing government archives on citizenship "would produce better data at a lower cost".

December 29, 2017: ProPublica publishes a copy of the Justice Department's request, triggering a public relations battle at the Census Bureau.

January 19, 2018: John Abowd, chief scientist of the Census Bureau, warned in a note to Ross that the addition of a question on citizenship to the census of 2020 "is very expensive, harms the quality of the census and uses much less precise data on citizenship than those available ". from existing government archives.

February 6, 2018: Jarmin confirmed in an email that Justice officials "do not want to meet" with the Census Bureau to discuss the ministry's request for citizenship. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has urged the DOJ not to discuss alternatives to adding a citizenship issue, Gore reveals several months later during his testimony.

February 13, 2018: "None of my AEI colleagues would speak favorably of the proposal, is it important that the person really supports the proposal?" Michael Strain, of the American Enterprise Institute, writes in an email to Jarmin, who is trying to arrange calls with groups likely to support the issue as part of the official review by Ross from the request of the Department of Justice. A group of former directors of the Census Bureau has already spoken out against the addition of the question of citizenship.

March 1, 2018: In another memo for Ross, Abowd recommends not to combine the answers to a citizenship question from the 2020 census with existing government archives "in order to create a complete statistical list of current US citizens" – an option requested by Ross after having reviewed the previous memo of the Census Bureau Chief. scientist.

March 16, 2018: The Census Bureau is beginning to collect responses in Providence County, Rhode Island, for the only complete test of the 2020 census. The questionnaires do not include a question on citizenship.

March 19, 2018: The campaign of President Trump and the Republican National Committee sent an email to their supporters: "The president wants the US census in 2020 to ask people whether they are citizens or not."

March 20, 2018: "We are responding only to the request of the Department of Justice," Ross told Congress before his representative, José Serrano, DN.Y., asked whether President Trump or someone else in the White House had asked him to add a question on citizenship at the 2020 census. At the same hearing before the Trade, Justice, Science and Related Credits Subcommittee, Representative Grace Meng, DN.Y., asked: "The President or a member of the White House Did he discuss with you or your team to add the citizenship question? "" I'm not aware of it, "says Ross. A few months later, Meng calls for a Justice Department investigation into whether Ross provided false statements to Congressmen after Trump administration's lawyers overturned Ross's testimony and revealed that he had discussed the matter with Bannon in spring 2017.

March 22, 2018: During a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, Ross told Judy Chu, D-Calif., That the Department of Justice "initiated the application" for a citizenship issue.

March 26, 2018: Ross announces his decision to add a new question to the 2020 census: "Is this person a United States citizen?" He also asked the Census Bureau to match the answers to the question with existing government records on citizenship. A few hours later, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra started the first lawsuit against the Trump administration for the removal of the matter.

March 28, 2018: In another email on a citizenship issue, the Trump campaign tells its supporters: "President Trump has formally asked that the 2020 US Census ask people living in America whether they are citizens or not."

March 29, 2018: The Census Bureau is sending Congress a report on the issues it plans to pose for the 2020 census, including the new question on citizenship approved by Ross.

April 3, 2018: The state of New York is leading more than twenty states and cities in filing a complaint in New York on the issue of citizenship.

April 11, 2018: A group of residents of Maryland and Arizona is suing in Maryland. A group affiliated with the redistricting organization of former Attorney General Eric Holder, the National Redistricting Foundation, is coordinating the lawsuit.

April 17, 2018: The city of San Jose, California, and Black Alliance for Just Immigration – an immigrant rights group led by co-founder Black Lives Matter, Opal Tometi – have filed lawsuits in California.

April 25, 2018: "It should not frighten people, they do not have to respond to it," said Sessions at a hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Trade, Justice, Science and Education Credits. related organizations. It was in response to a question from Senator Brian Schatz, from Hawaii, about the concerns of communities of color that the citizenship issue would prevent people from responding to the census. The sessions call these concerns "exaggerated", noting that the question is placed as the last question asked about each member of the household. According to federal law, refusal to answer a census question may result in a fine. Returning an incomplete form may result in a phone call or an in-person visit by an enumerator.

May 10, 2018: Asked by Senator Patrick Leahy, Dvt., Why there is a "sudden interest" in a citizenship issue, Ross testified at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Credits for Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies: "The Department of Justice is the one who made the request to us."

May 18, 2018: At the Parliamentary Oversight and Reform Committee hearings, Gore ducked the legislators' questions about why the Department of Justice had asked a question about citizenship. "You can not answer a question of whether you talked to your boss, who are we paying?" Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Asks after Gore avoided answering directly when he discussed the request with Sessions. Gore says that he can not comment because the Justice Department represents the Trump administration in the prosecution on the matter. He was absent at a previous hearing at which he was to attend.

May 23, 2018: The state of Alabama is suing the Trump administration to challenge the Census Bureau's long-standing policy of including unauthorized immigrants in the census numbers used to allocate congressional seats and votes from the polls. electoral college among the states.

May 31, 2018: The Unión del Pueblo Entero, a Texas-based community group founded by union activists César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, is pursuing another lawsuit in Maryland over the issue of citizenship.

June 6, 2018: The New York Immigration Coalition is pursuing another lawsuit in New York over the issue of citizenship.

June 21, 2018: In a memo filed as part of the prosecution, Ross reveals that he and his staff are behind the Department of Justice's request regarding a citizenship issue. Ross publicly reveals that "soon after" his appointment to the position of Secretary of Commerce, he thought that adding an issue on citizenship to the 2020 census "could be justified." The issue was raised by other "senior" Trump administration officials, he added.

July 26, 2018: US District Judge Jesse Furman rejects the Trump administration's request to file the two New York-based lawsuits over the issue of citizenship. Furman allows the complainants to argue that Ross abused his authority over the census and discriminated against immigrant communities of color by adding the question of citizenship.

August 17, 2018: The two lawsuits in California may continue, US District Judge Richard Seeborg, ruling on plaintiffs' allegations that Ross's decision to add the citizenship issue was unconstitutional and constituted an abuse of power. In New York, Furman orders the Trump administration to make Gore available for sworn interrogation, particularly because he appears to have played a role in drafting the Justice Department's request on a question of citizenship.

August 22, 2018: The US District Judge, George Hazel, authorizes the lawsuit brought by the residents of Maryland and Arizona and constitutes the fifth failure of the Trump administration in its attempts to get the lawsuits the citizenship issue be dropped in the courts.

September 21, 2018: Furman writes Ross to order him to question him under oath as part of the citizenship lawsuit. According to him, "the intention and credibility of Ross are directly involved in these cases".

October 9, 2018: Cummings and Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., Ask the Department of Commerce's Inspector General to examine how Ross was working with his staff to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census and asked them to do so. they "really took into account the concerns expressed by the Census Bureau experts."

October 11, 2018: A court record reveals that Ross discussed adding an issue of citizenship to the 2020 census with Bannon in the spring of 2017, when he also spoke with Sessions on the subject. The disclosure about Bannon – made "for the sake of completeness," according to Trump administration attorneys, contradicts Ross' testimony to Congress in March, when he said that he was "out of control." he was unaware of any discussion about it between him or his staff and the White House.

October 15, 2018: Sessions criticizes Furman's decision authorizing plaintiffs' attorneys to question Ross under oath about why he decided to add the question of citizenship. "The words on the page have no motive, they are allowed or not," said Sessions at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.

October 22, 2018: The Supreme Court temporarily prevents plaintiffs' lawyers from questioning Ross under oath. The judges allow them to drop Gore, as ordered by Furman. The decision comes after several attempts by the Trump administration to end the two depositions.

November 1, 2018: Researchers at the origin of a national study commissioned by the Census Bureau indicate that the citizenship issue could be a "major impediment" to the country's full participation in the 2020 census.

November 2, 2018: The Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration's request to delay the lawsuit for the New York lawsuits that are scheduled to begin Nov. 5.