CNBC: Supreme Court effectively blocks census citizenship question for now in a blow to Trump administration

CNBC: Supreme Court effectively blocks census citizenship question for now in a blow to Trump administration

After Hofeller’s death in August, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home and turned them over to Common Cause. “The Supreme Court saw through the explanations by the Commerce Department as pure pretext. The last-minute effort to add the question was clearly a cover-up to mask their true motives — to rig redistricting for partisan and racial gain,” Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s director of redistricting and representation, said in a statement after the opinion was released.

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a setback to the Trump administration’s plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, effectively blocking the addition of the question for now.

In an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court questioned the administration’s reasoning for adding the question and ordered the case to be reconsidered by a lower court. …

The Trump administration acknowledged in court that the inclusion of the citizenship question could make the survey less accurate. But the Commerce Department argued that the question would enable the government to better enforce certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

That rationale did not pass muster before three federal courts, which each blocked the addition of the question. Those courts, in New York, Maryland and California, found that the rationale offered by the Commerce Department was a pretext.

The official justification for the question came under further scrutiny in recent weeks after new documents surfaced that provided new evidence of a political motive behind the addition of the question. The documents were obtained by the government watchdog group Common Cause, and provided to the justices.

One of the documents the group uncovered was an unpublished 2015 study by an influential Republican redistricting expert, who found that the addition of the citizenship question could benefit “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” if the data were used in redistricting.

The study’s author, Thomas Hofeller, appeared to help ghostwrite a 2017 draft letter from the Justice Department to the Commerce Department that provided the Voting Rights Act rationale for the citizenship question, the documents show.

After Hofeller’s death in August, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home and turned them over to Common Cause.

“The Supreme Court saw through the explanations by the Commerce Department as pure pretext. The last-minute effort to add the question was clearly a cover-up to mask their true motives — to rig redistricting for partisan and racial gain,” Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s director of redistricting and representation, said in a statement after the opinion was released.