Supreme Court Leaves Citizenship Question Blocked For Now From 2020 Census

Hank77 said:

They didn't ask if the person is illegal or legal. They asked if they are a US citizen. There are thousands of people in this country who are here legally but are not citizens. So under funding for schools, roads, etc. could be a problem.

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Yes that's why the question could be changed.

rjs330 said:

There is presidence in the Constitution itself on who was to be counted. It wasn't everyone.

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"All free person, excluding Indians not counted, and 3/5th of other person." So yes, with the exception of Indians, which at that time were considered to be sovereign nations, everybody was counted.

...the Census forms are being printed without the question.

Meanwhile:
U.S. District Judge George Hazel is now giving the administration until Friday to decide whether it will enter into a written agreement that confirms it will no longer pursue including a citizenship question on census forms, plaintiffs' attorneys Denise Hulett of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Shankar Duraiswamy of Covington & Burling tell NPR. If the administration does not enter the agreement, the judge is prepared to start reconsidering recently resurrected discrimination and conspiracy allegations against the administration's decision to add the question.

DOJ Still Looking To Add Census Citizenship Question, Official Tells Court

wing2000 said:

...the Census forms are being printed without the question.

Meanwhile:
U.S. District Judge George Hazel is now giving the administration until Friday to decide whether it will enter into a written agreement that confirms it will no longer pursue including a citizenship question on census forms, plaintiffs' attorneys Denise Hulett of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Shankar Duraiswamy of Covington & Burling tell NPR. If the administration does not enter the agreement, the judge is prepared to start reconsidering recently resurrected discrimination and conspiracy allegations against the administration's decision to add the question.

DOJ Still Looking To Add Census Citizenship Question, Official Tells Court

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It is worth noting, the Judge seems very upset by the different stories he's getting from the government. He stated on the call, "I've been told different things, and it's becoming increasingly frustrating. If you were Facebook and an attorney for Facebook told me one thing, and then I read a press release from Mark Zuckerberg telling me something else, I would be demanding Mark Zuckerberg appear in court with you next time because I would be saying I don't think you speak for your client anymore."

While I don't see him demanding Pres. Trump come in, it was a rather strong statement that the Justice Department and administration need to get their act together and quit saying different things in court than they are in the press.

....the President refuses to let it drop....and in doing so, the court will now further examine evidence that speak to the administration's motives...

A federal judge in Maryland is moving forward with a case that claims the Trump administration intended to discriminate against immigrant communities of color by adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

U.S. District Judge George Hazel ordered proceedings to continue after lawyers with the Justice Department confirmed in a court filing Friday that they are still exploring possible ways to add the question — "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" — to the census form.
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Hazel's order means that as the Trump administration prolongs the legal fight to add a citizenship question to the census, more evidence may be revealed in court about how and exactly why the administration tried to include it.

Judge To Review Claims Of Census Citizenship Question's 'Discriminatory' Origins

While I will admit this is an opinion piece, rather than hard news, but it is something that appears to have been underreported in the media. The issue is, Trump admitted that their reason for wanting the citizenship question on the census is entirely for a political reason -- basically undercutting his own lawyers arguments.

Trump stated while speaking to reporters, “Number one, you need it for Congress — you need it for Congress for districting." Basically, they want to use the census as another form of gerrymandering, which the article goes onto explain. While some here may not agree with all the articles conclusions, it does appear to be well thought out and well written. And it further tends to show why the Judge is feeling like the government lawyers are not actually representing the administration.

SummerMadness said:

They ruled in favor of allowing political gerrymandering. The only problem with this ruling is they are allowing them another shot at this despite knowing the truth. Roberts is simply telling them to make up a better lie so he can pretend it's valid.

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Maybe Dr. Yuval Harari is right when he compares lawyers to sorcerers.

LoAmmi said:

I always find it amazing that the voices of the Founders the originalists hear tend to echo their own beliefs.

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Yeah, it's just as self-serving as how evangelicals read the Bible.

Hank77 said:

They didn't ask if the person is illegal or legal. They asked if they are a US citizen. There are thousands of people in this country who are here legally but are not citizens. So under funding for schools, roads, etc. could be a problem.

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That's the whole point. The administration wants to under-count certain people, in order to not provide money and government services to them. They have been shown to be doing this on purpose and they continue to press the issue after the court said to stop.

...rejected....again:

Two federal judges have rejected the Trump administration's requests to completely swap out its teams of lawyers who have been defending its push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
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U.S. District Judge George Hazel of Maryland wrote Wednesday that "as a practical matter, the Court cannot fathom how it would be possible, at this juncture, for a wholesale change in Defendants' representation not to have some impact on the orderly resolution of these proceedings unless Defendants provide assurance of an orderly transition between the withdrawing attorneys and new counsel."

Judges Reject Trump Administration Request To Swap Out Lawyers In Census Cases

...and today, Trump finally got the hint: there is no legal recourse.

The spin is rather entertaining to watch (...with his enabler AG).

President Trump Remarks on Census Citizenship Question | C-SPAN.org

Why does the government think that people who broke the law to get here and brake the law to stay here in the black market underworld, would be honest when filling out a census form?

Democrats are opposed to finding out how many illegal aliens live in the country.

Colter said:

Why does the government think that people who broke the law to get here and brake the law to stay here in the black market underworld, would be honest when filling out a census form?

Democrats are opposed to finding out how many illegal aliens live in the country.

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Is it too much to ask that people read the thread before making such egregiously incorrect comments? This isn’t hard. All of this has been covered already.

Maybe Trump isn't as concerned about the question as he is in forcing (D)'s to once again show their support for enabling illegal immigration into America going into the election? We already had a show of hands among (D) presidential candidates who want to force Americans to provide free healthcare for illegals.

iluvatar5150 said:

Is it too much to ask that people read the thread before making such egregiously incorrect comments? This isn’t hard. All of this has been covered already.

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Yes, that's too much to ask, the thread is not about you.

Colter said:

Democrats are opposed to finding out how many illegal aliens live in the country.

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Actually the worry is that the question will cause them not to respond. So we'll get a number that's too small. So it's kind of the opposite of what you say.

As you point out, we probably can't depend upon the citizenship question to tell us accurately who are citizens. So the goal is just to get the most accurate total possible. The Census people are telling Trump that they can find other ways to tell how many are citizens and people with other legal status.

Colter said:

Why does the government think that people who broke the law to get here and brake the law to stay here in the black market underworld, would be honest when filling out a census form?

Democrats are opposed to finding out how many illegal aliens live in the country.

Click to expand...

Colter said:

Maybe Trump isn't as concerned about the question as he is in forcing (D)'s to once again show their support for enabling illegal immigration into America going into the election? We already had a show of hands among (D) presidential candidates who want to force Americans to provide free healthcare for illegals.

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Colter said:

Yes, that's too much to ask, the thread is not about you.

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The question doesn't ask if people are here legally.

Colter said:

Why does the government think that people who broke the law to get here and brake the law to stay here in the black market underworld, would be honest when filling out a census form?

Democrats are opposed to finding out how many illegal aliens live in the country.

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That’s not the purpose of the census, but thanks for playing.

Trump, 'not backing down' in effort to count citizens amid census fight, announces executive order

What this means is that the citizenship question isn't going to be on the 2020 Census, because the Supreme Court completely screwed that with their ruling, so fair enough. Everyone could sit around and scream about how unfair it was or how dumb the ruling was, but that doesn't change the outcome either way. With this executive order, that doesn't really matter now.

Every department and agency in the federal government will need to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and non-citizens in the country, and then the Census Bureau can use this information--along with information collected through the questionnaire--to create the official census. This basically means that the functionality of the question is going to be a part of the census whether they like it or not, it won't even need to be a part of the actual questionnaire to do it, and it will actually be more accurate for it, since it's very easy to just lie or fail to hand in the census.

So, the real question is, if they could always do it this way, why not do it before?